COVID-19 Wednesday 1st April 2020

Just watched my first ‘Joe Wicks’. I know what you are thinking, why didn’t I get involved with the kids? The reality is that a bad back over the last 6 months with a bulged disc that may require surgery (not just now obviously), combined with a bad waistline over the last 30 odd years prevented me from taking part.

Nothing new to report yesterday as it was another ‘HR’ day, sorting out the staff, business planning to ensure the survival of the company whenever we emerge from this.

Today I did my daily ‘exercise’ as I like to do at 6a.m which combined my walk with some ‘lifting’ of sorts carrying a Tesco shop back with me…any routine is good routine.

On the work front, it is a wait and see. Some clients are open, some are reopening sites that they now deem ‘safe’ and more are still closing their sites and offices. It still feels too soon to know what all this means, so we wait to see whether we have some/ any work to do?

We did fall into a quirk the ‘furlough scheme’ yesterday though. We hired a member of the team, who is not eligible because he wasn’t on the payroll on 28th February. Clearly there is no work for them to do and it would be very difficult to justify when others more equipped have been stood down...given as a recruiter we know that many thousands of people move jobs every month and therefore many will be in this position), surely this is something that needs to be adjusted. We wait and hope!

I’m also hearing more and more that some candidates are disgruntled with furlough and feel let down by their employer. I do get it if your typical salary is ￡5,000 per month and now your furlough pay is ￡2,500 per month…No-one is going to be celebrating this!

Yesterday I heard of a candidate who left a business because he wouldn’t take a 20% wage cut that every other member of the business had agreed to. (Good luck on the job hunt, personally I’m staggered at that decision but obviously I don’t know their circumstances).

I’m a business owner and we too have had to take some tough decisions to ensure the survival of the company especially given the nature of what we do, and we are not a Plc or FTSE 100 company. We too may have some disgruntled staff because of our actions? Again, time will tell when we come out the other side…

I’ve read posts from recruiters urging people to judge how their company is treating them now and remember it. It is a sort of ‘call to arms’ stirring up people to make them potential candidates…

I strongly disagree with that attitude. These are exceptional times. Judge your employers on how they’ve treated you in the months and years prior to this and how they treat you the other side. And if you must judge this period too, fine but surely don’t take it on its own.

You cannot blame businesses for taking drastic actions if their revenues are decimated. Unless you work for a charity/ not for profit organization, they probably don’t have a choice.

That’s what I’m hoping our team will do if they look back and feel that during this time some of our decisions were too harsh.

There will be plenty of natural movement in our industry post COVID-19 as different companies come out in different health and also many projects will need to be delivered quickly to catch up some to deadlines…I don’t believe the recruitment sector needs to stir up any more candidates by telling them they weren’t looked after during this one 3-6 month period that will be unique in all our lifetimes…