Companies’ actions now could have a long-term reputational impact. Demonstrating empathy and flexibility, prioritizing workers’ mental health, and creating psychological safety can have a meaningful impact not only on employee experience but also on how the employer is seen going forward.
If we [companies] think about workforce flexibility now, one thing that’s becoming increasingly clear is that organizations are trying to find ways of managing people costs that don’t mean that they have to resort to layoffs or long furloughs. And so there’s a lot of interesting thinking going on around “what are creative ways in which we can manage wage costs?” Or “how can we [companies] redeploy or use this time to reskill workers?” So one of the challenges from a workforce perspective is how we [companies] can do that best.
