Due to COVID-19, Airbnb was forced to lay off around 25% of its staff. To help former coworkers, Airbnb launched an Alumni Talent Directory, and its in-house recruiting department became an alumni placement team. Ex-employees can add a brief description of their work history, as well as links to their resumes and LinkedIn profiles. People were also allowed to keep their work laptops, and their health insurance was covered for a year.
Unfortunately, major layoffs are often part of major transitions. But offering support and assistance to former employees can be a big boost to the morale of current and future employees.
💡 What can you do to help departing employees succeed in their new journey?
“We can expect many firms to be more flexible with time worked away from the office, resulting in programs and initiatives intended to support and encourage productive work-from-home environments,” Feeney says.
Not surprisingly, the COVID-19 pandemic uncovered opportunities for technological support in firms around the globe. Being able to access software and technology tools is critically important, but to be fully productive, Feeney says that firms must be able to provide remote technical assistance and support for workers in need.
“Software service models look more and more attractive given their benefits to a remote workforce and their ability to offer technical support as part of their service offering,” he says, “And videoconference technology will surely be viewed differently as it becomes less about the high-priced connectivity equipment and more about investments made to support remote workers, attract lateral candidates, and allow for suitable and meaningful client interface.”
The echo of economic uncertainty, although sure to reverberate for some time in the wake of the pandemic, will also be what shifts many industries into focusing on long-term opportunities.
“This may require the owners of businesses and real estate to take fundamental actions to ‘right-size’ their balance sheet, recast loans, leases, and other obligations to reflect new cash flow realities, and seek capital and new strategic partners to respond to the changing marketplace,” Feeney explains. “It may also afford significant opportunities for financially stronger companies and for investors to uncover new opportunities which may not otherwise have been available on favorable terms in a pre-COVID-19 environment.”
In addition to being forced to adjust to factors brought on by the pandemic, Feeney says that law firms will need to be more aware and action-oriented when it comes to diverse and inclusive workforces across the corporate landscape—including the legal profession.
“The protests and social upheaval in 2020 spotlighted the critical issues of bias, systemic racism, and racial injustice along with their impact on our communities of color,” Feeney says. “These priorities will greatly influence ongoing recruiting and operational strategies. At Snell & Wilmer, we are committed to having a diverse and inclusive workplace, with an understanding that diversity makes us stronger as a firm.”
Employees’ desire to work for organizations whose values align with their own has been growing for some time. In 2020, this desire accelerated: Gartner research shows that 74% of employees expect their employer to become more actively involved in the cultural debates of the day. I believe CEOs will have to respond in order to retain and attract the best talent.
However, making statements about the issues of the day is no longer enough: Employees expect more. And CEOs who have spent real resources on these issues have been rewarded with more highly engaged employees. A Gartner survey found that the number of employees who were considered highly engaged increased from 40% to 60% when their organization acted on today’s social issues.
During the pandemic, more than 1 out of 4 companies has purchased new technology, for the first time, to passively track and monitor their employees. However, many of these same companies haven’t determined how to balance employee privacy with the technology, and employees are frustrated. Gartner research found that less than 50% of employees trust their organization with their data, and 44% don’t receive any information regarding the data collected about them. In 2021, we expect a variety of new regulations at the state and local level that will start to put limits on what employers can track about their employees. Given the variability that this will create, companies are likely to adopt the most restrictive standards across their workforce.
While enabling employees to work remotely became commonplace across 2020 (and will continue this year and beyond), the next wave of flexibility will be around when employees are expected to work.
Gartner’s 2020 ReimagineHR Employee Survey revealed that only 36% of employees were high performers at organizations with a standard 40-hour work week. Organizations that offer employees flexibility over when, where and how much they work, see 55% of their work force as high performers. In 2021, I expect to see a rise of new jobs where employees will be measured by their output, as opposed to an agreed-upon set of hours.
MAT is a ride-hailing app in Colombia that uses an employee-owned business model. Drivers, called ‘ambassadors’, become shareholders by working for the company, with MAT promising higher pay as it grows. Research consistently shows that employee-ownership boosts satisfaction, motivation and productivity. As for consumers, they’re more inclined to pay extra for services if workers are paid and treated decently.
Uncovering and transforming business models that are harmful to employees will be a leitmotif of the 2020s. By re-envisioning the nature of ownership, companies have a chance to boost brand and employee equity.
💡 How can you build companies where employees truly own the fruits of their labor and skills?
Employers that provide the Covid vaccine to their workforce will leverage this action as a key differentiator to attract and retain talent. In tandem with employers providing the vaccine, several companies will be sued for requiring their employees to have proof of vaccination before allowing them to return to the workplace. The corresponding litigation will slow return-to-workplace efforts even as vaccine usage increases.
Dependable external and internal relationships and connections have proven to be critical during periods of uncertainty, according to Feeney. “Clients want and need guidance during these challenging times. They will still need to turn to trusted sources of advice and counsel,” he says.
Maintaining and strengthening internal relationships in the legal industry will require frequent, transparent, and direct communications to all personnel.
With more people working remotely, combined with a desire to decrease their footprint, Feeney expects firms will increasingly seek to reduce their square footage. “Many firms have been gradually reducing their overall square footage and have been moving to a single universal office size,” he says.
Although Feeney predicts that expense management, particularly when it comes to costs associated with real estate, will be an increasing priority, he also invites caution.
“Simply reducing costs will rarely, if ever, solve the problem,” says Feeney when asked about how the post-pandemic challenges may continue to affect the legal industry.
Actively practicing and involved in firm management during the 2008 Great Recession, Feeney and his colleagues were forced to endure a similarly volatile and unpredictable environment in which to operate.
“While the two crises are different in many respects, they provide similar blueprints for addressing their unique challenges,” Feeney says. “First, remain committed, yet flexible, to current strategies. Focus and build on existing strengths. Next, reduce costs quickly, but to a point. When faced with uncertain demand, firms often need to lower costs in an effort to marshal resources for a long road back.”
Waiting to reduce costs in the hope that the recovery comes quickly will put a firm in a difficult position if that gamble turns out to be wrong.
Rather than tossing the proverbial coin, Feeney recommends instead, “mining the entrepreneurial spirit that helped build the firm in the first place. The advantages that made a product or service worth more than what the cost leaders offer still apply.”
And, he adds the helpful reminder, “that most firms survived the Great Recession.”
The pandemic has given business leaders increased visibility into the personal lives of their employees, who have faced unprecedented personal and professional struggles over the last year.
It’s become clear that supporting employees in their personal lives more effectively enables employees to not only have better lives, but also to perform at a higher level. According to Gartner’s 2020 ReimagineHR Employee Survey, employers that support employees with their life experience see a 23% increase in the number of employees reporting better mental health and a 17% increase in the number of employees reporting better physical health. There is also a real benefit to employers, who see a 21% increase in the number of high performers compared to organizations that don’t provide the same degree of support to their employees.
That’s why 2021 will be the year where employer support for mental health, financial health, and even things that were previously seen as out of bounds, like sleep, will become the table stakes benefits offered to employees.
Many organizations have already adopted a hybrid workforce — or are planning to this year — that enables employees to work from the corporate office, their home, or an alternate third space (coffee shop, co-working space, etc.). In this hybrid scenario, we are hearing from CHROs that the surveys of their own employees are showing that men are more likely to decide to return to their workplace, while women are more likely to continue to work from home.
According to a recent Gartner survey, 64% of managers believe that office workers are higher performers than remote workers, and in turn are likely to give in-office workers a higher raise than those who work from home. However, data that we have collected from both 2019 (pre-pandemic) and 2020 (during the pandemic) shows the opposite: Full-time remote workers are 5% more likely to be high performers than those who work full-time from the office.
So if men are more likely to work from the office, and managers retain a bias towards in-office workers, we should expect to see managers over-rewarding male employees at the expense of female employees, worsening the gender-wage gap at a time when the pandemic has already had a disproportionate impact on women.
The number of skills employers are looking for has risen dramatically — our analysis shows that companies listed about 33% more skills on job ads in 2020 than they did in 2017. Ultimately, organizations simply can’t reskill the capabilities of their existing workforce fast enough to meet their changing needs.
At the margin, some companies will shift from trying to build skills for an uncertain future and instead just hire, and pay a premium for those skills, when the need actually manifests. Other companies will instead expand their use of contingent and contract hiring or expand their partnerships with organizations to “rent” employees for a short period of time to meet the skill needs that they are facing.
States and cities have historically offered incentives to get companies to relocate to their jurisdictions. The belief being if you can incentivize companies to come, they will bring jobs with them. The new era of remote and hybrid work will evolve this strategy – where an employee lives will be less tied to where their employer is located than ever before.
Given this breaking of company location and employee location, states and cities will start to use their tax policies to create incentives for individuals to relocate to their jurisdictions rather than giving tax credits solely to large companies to relocate. We are already seeing fledging programs in cities like Topeka, KS and Tulsa, OK where they are offering remote employees up to $15,000 to move there. These jurisdictions will compete for individual employees and their jobs, not just the employer.
https://azbigmedia.com/business/here-are-7-legal-industry-trends-to-watch-in-2021/
https://hbr.org/2021/01/9-trends-that-will-shape-work-in-2021-and-beyond