A recent survey showed almost four out of five US workers fear for their jobs if recession hits.
How will your organization chart its path?
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We join the conversation as our hosts discuss the prospect of a recession and how employees, and employers alike, can navigate a way through. It’s not all that rosy, but it is important. Listen above or read the excerpt beneath which has been edited for clarity.
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Allie Nawrat: Do you think it’s also potentially the jobs that they’re doing? Because that was a lot of the issue, isn’t it, in terms of women leaving the workforce is that they’re often doing more frontline work or shift work, because potentially they have to fit it around picking up kids from school? And therefore, those are potentially some of the jobs that will go first.
I think, what was shocking to me in the study was how employees believed this, but how managers also think that it’s going to happen. So it’s like they’re right to be afraid, which is not nice. What you want it to say is that they’re afraid, but they shouldn’t be.
Dan Richardson: Oh, yeah. But unfortunately, I think it was over 80% of managers were like, ‘yeah, we’re anticipating it’. It’s one of those incredibly dreary statistics, unfortunately, where people are nervous, they unfortunately have a right to be nervous.
I think maybe some organizations will be happy that they can finally close down the hybrid talks and just be like, do what we tell you.
AN: I mean, long term, though. That’s not that’s a short term solution, is it? A bit like some of the issues that the airlines are facing, right? Where they had to lay off all these people in COVID-19, because you couldn’t fly, you couldn’t go anywhere. But now they can’t recruit again, because people don’t want to do that job or the pay is not that good. And they’re like, actually, I’d rather not be traveling across the world and having no work/life balance, because of having all those shifts.
DR: Expectations change with our societal norms. And so I do honestly think if we go into a recession, people will probably accept that they just earn less with inflation and stuff like that. It’s really depressing now, but maybe next year, when we look at where the situation is, people will say, Oh, well, I only got my 3% pay rise, and I was grateful for it because the 10% they were asking for just hasn’t worked out. And then you have a recession on top.
AN: I think it’s hard though, isn’t it? Because people are worried about their job. There’s a cost of living crisis. We were joking a little bit earlier, but you see fewer and fewer people with Pret bags in the morning, I’m like, I’ve got to bring my breakfast from home. And I think as you wrote in the piece, obviously, there’s going to be some layoffs, it’s going to be really horrible. But for the companies that aren’t going to do layoffs, they need to be really clear and reassure their employees and be really transparent.
And I think that’s almost more important, is have the communication [that] rather than give them a pay raise, just be like, hello, let’s have a discussion about the fact that right now we’re not going to do layoffs. But maybe in six months, we’ll have to reconsider. But we’ll keep you in the loop. We’ll support you. Maybe if we lay you off or give you some training, I can’t remember which company it was that was doing that.
But there’s one company we talked to who when they had to put people on furlough, when they had to lay people off, they kept them in a loop of learning and development so that they didn’t have to just fall off a cliff and be like, what do I do now?
