Helping prevent job losses during Covid time ..

Covid time brings many stresses in personal and family life as for many income flow is strained.

As many as 41 lakh youth in the country lost jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic while construction and farm sector workers account for the majority of job losses, according to a joints report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Economic Times, Aug 18, 2020

Due to poor customer arrivals at seller premises, less patients in hospitals , students in educational institutions etc., and the resultant loss of revenue,  organisations are forced to cut on the number of employees in the organisation.

I am aware of organisations in Bangalore giving employees half pay as customer orders are not being fulfilled, supplier replenishments are not coming. Even though entrepreneurs would want to keep their employees employed and busy, due to the Covid situation and resultant processes to isolate employees to their homes, for fear of spread of the virus, organisations remain closed for want of workforce. We find the whole supply chains for many products and processes have been disturbed.

What is a solution to this ? While going through the October '20 issue of HBR, (click here) I came upon an article that spoke of an innovative way to keep employees engaged and employed by asking healthy employees in hospitals to visit the areas of demand, ie. customer premises of patients, to help keep the hospital business up and running.

Even though this is just a suggestion, it is worth emulating to see how it works. Maybe, educational institutions can ask their healthy faculty members to move across the country to cities that have large concentrations of their students, rent premises in those cities, stay in those cities and engage classes, till the end of the Covid crisis. This way the students need not travel far and expose themselves, while more responsible faculty members can keep the students engaged.

Being an innovative suggestion, Universities and educational institutions around the world should explore the possibility of this idea at least till the end of the Covid crisis. This will make the customers feel that the organisation is really customer friendly.

Not only hospitals and educational institutions, other service oriented organisations should try this option. Government officers could visit the houses of the public, understand their concerns and address them.

This will also be a training at how organizations can be more customer responsive in case more severe  lock downs do happen in future. 

george.