In this era of COVID-19, a lot of young and vibrant professionals have been fired from their jobs and they have lost their sources of livelihood. Many companies have said they cannot keep paying salaries while communities are on lockdown and they cannot institute working from home as they are not in the essential services sector.
This is understandable. However, we have it on good authority that some companies are taking advantage of the situation to lay off hundreds of work staff, while they retain upper management. A client of ours recently got an email from her office, where she was told that the office does not need her services anymore as they need to pay the salaries and benefits of senior staff.
Our client and several of her work colleagues were let go for the sake of paying higher cadre staff, not necessarily because they couldn’t afford to pay them but because they want the higher cadre staff to earn even more than they are already earning.
It was announced recently, that South African company, Woolworths will continue paying their staff as the upper management staff will take a pay cut for three months, so they can pay the lower cadre staff. This is the difference between companies that are compassionate enough to remember that their work staff is human after all and those who just want to make a profit at the expense of others.
Lingo Africa the foremost human capital development platform in Abuja, has analyzed this situation and concluded that before anyone starts working in a company or honoring an invite to join companies, they must first of all;
Carry out your own research on the kind of work culture they have. This cannot be done just by a simple Google Search. One must also ask relevant questions. Who do you ask? The current staff members and the former staff. You will be surprised at the insights you will gain from asking the right questions.
After the conversations, you will be able to make informed decisions on whether you want to work with them or change companies.
Ask them directly during the interview. Interviewers usually give the floor to interviewees to ask relevant questions about the role or the company itself. This is the moment where you should be bold enough to ask questions that will reveal the kind of culture they operate in. Companies that do not ask if you have any questions as an interviewee, do not necessarily have an agenda, so, if they do not bring it up, you should bring it up politely.
After the pandemic is over and you attend a job interview, you can ask companies the kind of decisive action they took during the pandemic to ensure that their staff was protected.
Follow the trend of available information. Those who will work at companies that have a social media presence, they must leverage that to dig deeper. This is beyond just reading their posts, it is also about reading the comments under their posts. Comments are usually a revealer of either good or bad behavior not just of individuals but of companies.
So, put your social media listening skills to good use and you are likely to find out if that company is worth working for. It is true that jobs are hard to find, but would you want to work for a company that does not respect or regard its workers? Your mental health is as important as your financial status.