A New Vocabulary Word

It seems we have added a new word to our vocabulary: furlough. According to the American dictionary, it is a time allowed for a person to be absent. The word was borrowed from the Dutch verlof, which is related to the English word leave. Is a pandemic a good reason to furlough an employee? It seems so.

Companies impacted by the pandemic are resorting to many different sources to cut costs. This includes reducing working hours, mandating pay cuts, and laying off employees. Furloughs are a way to quickly cut operating costs now and minimize re-hiring costs later.

For key workers, there has been huge pressure applied to their jobs and monumental pressure in their daily duties. For those who have been on flexible furlough and working at home, the thought of returning to a crowded office via a packed commuter train and sharing a microwave in a small kitchen is unthinkable.

A lot of measures will have to be taken into account when the lock-down has been opened back up. Businesses will have to change work hours so that everyone doesn’t arrive at the same time and continue the practice of working from home, even if it’s for part of the week, to keep the number of office staff down to a minimum.

An external event like Coronavirus can change our employment status overnight. Our attitudes towards work are changing as a result of this too.

While some people are able to work from home during the pandemic, other people simply don’t have jobs that allow for that. Due to a fractious job market, some workers, flexibly furloughed or not, may not have any other option but to return to their old place of work. Especially if they’ve been treated well during the crisis and they’ve been shown care and concern by their employer. That’s good for them and their employer, because they are likely to be happier and more productive.

When it comes to working from home on an ongoing basis, it’s hard for employees to develop good relationships when they have to communicate online because virtual communication tends to be more formal. Those spontaneous opportunities to connect with others in the hall or over a pre-meeting coffee are a thing of the past. No matter how good your wifi connection is, we can’t look people directly in the eye or mirror their expressions. Both of these are important for developing trust.

In these uncertain times, one of the few post pandemic certainties is that COVID will have a lasting impact on how people work going forward.