Job Losses Plan B

Twitter, the micro-blogging company announced this week that employees who want to work from home permanently, can do so.

I figure it was relatively easy to take that decision, because their business is freedom, freedom to work anywhere, anytime, tweeting about the state of the world and being the conduit for hopes and dreams as folks tweet their unfinished chapters, music and body parts.

Other businesses are not as free as a bird (Twitter bird). They are grounded in a business address customers need, to drop off and pick up manufactured goods or parcels.

That physical address might be full of industrial machinery and fleet of cars and trucks that are serviced regularly by an outside company. Hospitals, schools, metro trains and buses and thousands other businesses are also grounded and cannot work from home.  

Twitter’s decision confirms what was obvious from the beginning, that social distancing, caused by COVID-19 will result in loss of jobs because of alternative ways of doing business without being in a room with 25 other people.

Twitter is not laying off people as such, it is giving them an option but, an option that might result in lay-offs in other companies. Managers are particularly vulnerable because what and who is there to manage if a company decides to do most of its business via video conferencing?

We don’t own the company, so we should do some introspection.  What is the nature of my job? It is not essential if it is not in the food chain delivering broccoli to supermarkets, or health services like hospitals. If it's non-essential, can it be taken over by a digital device which could be on a desk anywhere in the world?

Photo: Nonqaba waka Msimang

Companies are considering following Twitter’s lead but working from home does not necessarily include you. It can result in sending your job to another country that pays in local currency, not dollars, British pounds or euros. It is done all the time. Problems with your bank or credit card statement? Call this Toll-free number. It could be answered by someone in Mumbai India or Maseru Lesotho.

That is why self-auditing your job during this COVID-19 leave of absence, is important. Is it essential? Can it be outsourced? What is Plan B if you are unemployed? Change career, register a consultancy and sell your knowledge to the same company that laid you off or get another job?

Getting another job is a long long shot, because of where we are, and where we are going to be for the next year or so.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.