How to Secure Your Position When You Are on Furlough

As the economy is shifting and companies try to reopen in phases, many employers will be finding themselves in an enormously difficult situation. It is everyone’s wish that companies who reopen will hire additional employees, but, realistic experts, including the US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, believe that unemployment will get worse before it gets better.

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, which has placed many companies in a hard situation, it is not easy for an employer, who adores the employees that have worked for his company for many years, to decide, Who am I keeping and who am I letting go? How can I let go an individual who needs to support a family?

As a Recruiter dealing with many Employers and Hiring managers on a daily bases, and as an Employer myself, I can tell you that these decisions are now beyond anyone’s imagination.

Most employers are not simply cold-hearted individuals, they do care about their staff and their future. Getting a business up and running again at full gear after weeks of no activity or limited activity is not an easy task at all, and having this burden of picking and choosing which employee gets to stay, or whom to let go for good, is just more stress and hardship.

But it is the hope and wish that experienced employers will have the strength and courage to overcome their difficulties in order to get their companies running again. We believe that they will make the right decisions, 70% or even 50% of hires are better then 0%, and it is everyone’s wish that as soon as the economic crises gets better, companies will rehire and hopefully need to even add more staff.

For now, I believe it is important for employees to know what they can do on their part to help employers keep them on top of the rehiring list:

Check in with your Employer:

Don’t wait until you get contacted to come back to work, you should be the one reaching out and offering your service. Although the company you work for did not reopen yet, let them know they can reach out to you at any time for a helping hand, etc. This will show the employer that you care about the business and you are a valuable asset for the company not there just for your weekly paycheck. So when it comes down to choose which employee to keep, it can help them make the decision to keep you.

Let go of your unemployment claim when necessary to keep your position:

When the covid-19 pandemic hit the United States, the government shut down the entire economy, but at the same time the government kicked in to help millions of employees, spending trillions in stimulus packages. Millions of employees flocked to claim Unemployment. The government first offered a stimulus for everyone, and for those who claimed Unemployment, they also offered an extra $600 per week on top of the amount of standard Unemployment, which is based on employees’ payroll check, if earnings where less than a six figures.

Now when companies are reopening, many employees got used to getting free money. Some earn more now from all the stimulus goodies, equivalent to what they earned until now working a full shift. Some think that even though they earn less, they feel it is somehow worth earning a free salary, because they look at the benefit of earning without the need to come to work.

Well, employees need to know that those extra benefits will:

A) Expire very soon

B) The government will do everything in their power to rebuild the economy and get the unemployment level to a lower rate, therefore it is fair to say that everyone who claims Unemployment now will need to show and prove that they are doing all they can to get into the workforce again

C) The employers will not wait, they will hire others instead, and you might be without a job once the stimulus runs out

D) If your employer got approved for the SBA PPP forgiveness loan (payroll protection program), they will need to show that you are working there as an employee. Your Unemployment claim will hurt them from getting the stimulus which was designed to help your employer keep your job, therefore it’s important that employees understand that sometimes by getting hooked on to earning a free and a capped salary for a short period of time, it can backfire into losing their longtime position at the company where they can earn a living for a much longer period and also has the opportunity for them to grow. 

E) More so and most importantly, this prolonged gap of unemployment can be detrimental to your resume and therefore have an effect on your future job opportunists.

Now is the time Employees should be proactive, and do whatever they can to either try to secure their position, or seek out for new job opportunists as soon as possible.