“My whole working life is starting to become a memory.” That was the verdict of one technician in a long-running London theatre production.
When theatres were shut by lockdown in March, he was furloughed — paid up to £2,500 a month by the UK government through its coronavirus job retention scheme. Over six months later, his theatre remains closed and will not qualify for government money through a new job support scheme, announced last week by chancellor Rishi Sunak. So he is about to become redundant.
The notion of “furlough addiction” could not be further from the truth, he says. “It’s affected my mental health greatly. It’s been so long since I’ve done my job, [it feels like] it’s something I used to do. There’s nothing on the horizon.” Unable to disclose his name for fear of breaching confidentiality clauses in his redundancy deal, he is gloomy about the chances of returning to his old profession. “I’ll drive for Amazon or stack shelves at Tesco,” he says.
Some 9.6m UK jobs have been helped by the furlough scheme at some point this year. Daniel Tomlinson, senior economist at the Resolution Foundation, a think-tank, notes the latest official data is from July, but estimates about 3m people were still using the scheme at the start of September. Many of these will have been on ‘flexible furlough’, he adds, going back to work at least some of the time, but as many as 1m have not worked for months.
As the furlough scheme draws to a close at the end of October, attention has been focused on whether furloughed workers will keep their jobs. Yet this huge experiment has raised issues for businesses.
One manager complains of resentment among those who spent the summer working while their furloughed peers enjoyed — as they saw it — a paid holiday. Some have been liberated by leave, using it to retrain into new careers, develop side-hustles, care for sick relatives or homeschool children. One estate agent complained furlough fever might have affected a few of his peers who had resisted a return to work until their employer sent a stiffly worded threat of redundancy.
Anthony Wheeler, dean of the School of Business Administration at Widener University, resists characterisations of workers abusing the system. Humans are hard-wired over centuries to work. Nonetheless, he says furloughed staff’s return to work is “just as large a shock to an organisation as sending those employees out on furlough. It represents dramatic change.” Returning employees re-enter a different organisation. “So much will have changed. The culture will have changed. Expectations will have changed. All of this must be learned, and returning and non-furloughed employees will have to go through this re-socialisation process.”
For an employee who is used to a culture of presenteeism, remote working will be a shock to the system. A survey by Boston Consulting Group, the management consultants, of 2,000 workers on the jobs retention scheme found that one-third of UK employees returning from furlough feel trusted by employers to do their work remotely, compared to four-fifths of non-furloughed employees. Ann Francke, chief executive of the Chartered Management Institute, suggests partnering “new returners with those who have been working throughout to bring them up to speed quickly”, as well as support groups, attended by senior leaders, and training.
The experience of furlough will be affected by many factors but one key differentiator is how confident workers were about having a job at the end of it. Among my own friends, one researcher enjoyed the past few months because he was relaxed about his long-term prospects. Another, in events management, was gloomy. Despite exercising manically and taking up the piano, he started to feel despondent locked down with his wife, who was frantically busy at work. When friends were brought back from furlough he started to feel “a little ashamed”. His GP prescribed mild antidepressants.
In the end he was made redundant. It spurred him into action and luckily he found a new job. Nonetheless, he was “extremely nervous . . . I’d lost a lot of confidence.” A few weeks later he is thriving. Work, he says, “helped me recover”.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiP2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmZ0LmNvbS9jb250ZW50LzEzZDg4YjVjLTljYzMtNDk0NS1hNWIyLTZiMThkYzExNTc3OdIBP2h0dHBzOi8vYW1wLmZ0LmNvbS9jb250ZW50LzEzZDg4YjVjLTljYzMtNDk0NS1hNWIyLTZiMThkYzExNTc3OQ?oc=5
2020-10-01 11:00:00Z
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