COVID-19 and Career Transition: What’s the Effect?

COVID-19 has had and still will have a huge impact on our society, health, lifestyle and the economy. Governments across the globe have supported employers who were struggling during these times. This support ranges between 60 and 100% of employees pay-checks.

Some things have changed such as the increase in labour mobility between sectors. For candidates this is interesting since more recruiters are looking at different candidates than they did in previous times. Career fluidity is increasing and soft skills are becoming more important.

This shift in ‘desirable skills’ for job roles, will also help to feed the increasing trend for younger people to move jobs more frequently than in the past and may lead to workers having more experience in multiple roles.

How to Help Your Employees
HR teams have had to very quickly adapt their workforces in 2020 – some into unknown territory of a remote workforce, remote management, training, changes to IT infrastructure and supporting employees in an entirely different way. Employees expect a high level of support and understanding from their employers and HR teams must work out how this is delivered. And then comes structural changes to organisations. Restructuring within firms is inevitable, and now many companies face restructuring their workforce, some perhaps on a large scale.

It is important that a strong strategic plan has been put in place looking at the talent within the company, gap analysis and the possibility of internal mobility before redundancies are made. Many organisations will partner with a specialist career transition provider to help them navigate through this mammoth task. Professional career transition specialists will help to bridge the gap between strategy and implementation providing guidance and programmes for each step.

Communication with employees is highly important and must be managed correctly. Every step of the process could have a huge effect on an individual and on the reputation of the organisation.

COVID-19 and career transition is intrinsically linked. The world of work will change in the aftermath of the virus, that much is inevitable. However, with an increase in labour mobility between sectors and industries, and the realisation of the importance of soft skills, employees can thrive if given the right support when exiting an organisation. Specific and successful programmes for employees have been designed to do just this.

If you require any further information on how we can support your organisation and employees, please contact us here.