Business & Finance Workforce & Business Changes, Layoffs, BCPs

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It's a bad combo. The only thing that is really known is that the more isolation the better, but any measure is only effective relative to the critical mass of cases. South Korea seemed to get on top of it the best and they still have 5 times as many cases as we have.

A competent, trustworthy govt that people listen to making up as they go along is still preferable to what we have now.
 
Scotland said:
It's a bad combo. The only thing that is really known is that the more isolation the better, but any measure is only effective relative to the critical mass of cases. South Korea seemed to get on top of it the best and they still have 5 times as many cases as we have.

A competent, trustworthy govt that people listen to making up as they go along is still preferable to what we have now.
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We haven't had one of them for years. It's half the reason people don't listen to government.
 
Hawk Dork said:
Chaddy carpark 10.30 Friday
c87ed12de448c6f3fd2794567e6826143418d0b6

www.theage.com.au

'Not even worth opening your doors': Shopping malls turn into ghost towns as coronavirus hits retail

Shop owners are on the front line of a crisis sweeping retailers across the country as the devastating coronavirus pandemic drives customers indoors and sales dry up.
www.theage.com.au www.theage.com.au
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RohanConnolly will be well pleased
 

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I wonder if you could talk for a minute about the difference between being, right now, a salaried, full-time employee versus being an hourly or non-salaried worker. And how it strikes me that that may be a huge split, bifurcation, that one class is going to do much better than the other. Am I wrong on that or right on that?

BLOOM: You’re right. So on the one hand there’s folks like me and you that are on a salary and can kind of relax in some senses, and we have all kinds of issues with our kids and health risks, but at least we’re not worried about losing our income. And then on the other hand, there are people that are hourly pay that I think life is substantially harder yet still for, because they’ve also got to go out and work, which puts them at higher exposure risk. And when the recession happens, they’re the ones that are easiest for the firms to lay off.

DUBNER: Can you think of an example from history, either recent or distant, of how — in a case like this, where workers, especially the most vulnerable workers, have the rug pulled out from under them, a case where government and/or private firms responded well to this problem?

BLOOM: I mean, unfortunately, when you look at recessions generally, the lower-skilled, lower-paid do much worse. When has there been a good response? You know, I’m scratching my head to think about it. I mean, there are things like Ford, on the $5 a day, which was famous in the 30’s, stepped in to guarantee workers an honest living wage. In recent times, I mean the last 20, 30 years, actually, labor markets have generally been moving towards being more flexible. And so it’s become easier for firms to lay people off, particularly hourly workers.



Athlonxp said:
I work in the Finance industry (actually I work for a debt collection company doing accounting/payment processing sort of stuff)

The team I’m in has just started working from home this week and I know for myself it’s been a huge paradigm shift.
Not seeing anyone else during the day actually takes a toll on your mental health I have found...though it’s only been two days so far....but still a big change for myself at this time.

The remote desktop environment was super sluggish yesterday (probably because of 560 staff logging on!)
Other than that it’s still the same workload at this time even with working from home.

The one thing on my mind however is how many people out there will be able to service their debts moving forward if job losses skyrocket over the next 6 months?
Makes me wonder how that will hit the company’s bottom line in light of that (though on the flip side of that we aren’t spending money on international and domestic travel at this time too plus other associated costs)
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Some very good studies suggesting this is real

freakonomics.com

The Side Effects of Social Distancing - Freakonomics

The Side Effects of Social Distancing - Freakonomics
freakonomics.com

Nick Bloom probably knows more about working from home than just about anyone you’ll ever meet. Not just because he’s a professor, and not because he’s lazy — but because he’s studied this very question.

BLOOM: Somewhat coincidentally, six years ago, we ran a study out in Shanghai, in China, where a large online travel agent called CTrip, which is really like China’s version of Expedia. They decided to allow employees to work from home because they found office space in Shanghai was expensive. So they asked 1,000 employees who wanted to work from home. And interestingly, only 500 of them volunteered, despite the fact employees on average were commuting 30 minutes each way. Of those 500 employees, they then randomized them by birth date.
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They randomized them so that the experiment would be truly an experiment, and not an exercise in self-selection.

BLOOM: And then we tracked them for nine months. And what we found were three things. Firstly, employees working from home — so these were people, I should say, were booking telephone calls and making— processing data on computers. So they were kind of individual working jobs. They were 13 percent more productive. I mean, 13 percent is a huge increase. And the reasons they told us was, you know, A, it’s quieter at home, so they could concentrate more. But B, actually, they just tended to work their full shift rather than spending as much time at lunch or arriving late or taking long toilet breaks. Secondly, their quit rates halved. Many of them much preferred working from home and didn’t want to leave their job. And thirdly, once you controlled for performance, since they were performing better, they actually weren’t getting promoted any faster — so there is some sting in the tail, that being at home seemed to reduce your ability to get promoted.
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DUBNER: It sounds like good news that productivity and happiness and all these things can increase. On the other hand, it sounds like that job that you were looking at lends itself particularly well to working from home, yes?
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BLOOM: Yes. As you said, there’s a couple of major caveats. So it’s really not a team job. So that’s why you can be at home four out of five days a week. The second point was that after the end of the study, they then ask employees to re-decide whether they wanted to work from home or come back into the office. And half of the employees said after spending nine months at home, they didn’t like it. They felt isolated and lonely and they volunteered to come back into the office. So for me, the warnings from the COVID experiment is A, the type of working from home we’re talking about now is very extreme. It’s full-time, five days a week. I should note that less than five percent of Americans currently do that. Lots of people work from home a day a week, but very few people work from home full-time. It’s kind of like comparing going to the gym sporadically with marathon training, so it’s pretty extreme.
And B, as you say, we tested employees that don’t need to spend time together. And most people do. And C, the COVID threat could well go on for months and months. I really worry about a big tick up in people getting depressed, mental- health issues, which leads to health issues, more generally, because of the isolation it could lead to. My prediction is, we will find that people that do routine jobs may perform okay at home but for the majority of us, I think it’s going to be pretty painful personally, with all the loneliness. And I suspect will be pretty damaging for productivity, particularly as time goes on. So I think if there’s one or two weeks, it wouldn’t be so bad. But if it stretches on to three to six months, I think it’s going to be hugely damaging economically.
MOSKOWITZ: As you gather that data, and I suspect a lot of companies are doing this, you can get a sense of, well, what is the productivity loss, if any, from having people work at home?
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Brother/Dad, Best friend, All lost their jobs all will be ok for 9 months bar my brother who is looking to move into my parents as he's on a month by month lease, Looking absolutely shakey where they could shut the doors any minute in terms of Government crackdown

Truly worrying s**t. Best bet would of been for the government to shut everything down for 2 weeks. given enough money so people could eat/keep a roof over the heads and go out once a day to exercise.
 
Upgrayedd said:
Brother/Dad, Best friend, All lost their jobs all will be ok for 9 months bar my brother who is looking to move into my parents as he's on a month by month lease, Looking absolutely shakey where they could shut the doors any minute in terms of Government crackdown

Truly worrying s**t. Best bet would of been for the government to shut everything down for 2 weeks. given enough money so people could eat/keep a roof over the heads and go out once a day to exercise.
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It's gotta be more than two weeks.
They can't test everyone.
We know not everyone has strong symptoms and none of the lock downs have been without the ability to get food or medicine.

Some people have to work. So it's still going to spread just more slowly.

But people can take 2 weeks to show symptoms not two weeks to be clear of being infectious
 
Gralin said:
It's gotta be more than two weeks.
They can't test everyone.
We know not everyone has strong symptoms and none of the lock downs have been without the ability to get food or medicine.

Some people have to work. So it's still going to spread just more slowly.

But people can take 2 weeks to show symptoms not two weeks to be clear of being infectious
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No but they needed to give a timeline for the lockdown. By doing that business can plan and have a goal theyre aiming for so can probably budget for and keep more people in jobs. By doing what we are doing, businesses have NFI and are just cutting losses.

A strict, 3 week lockdown wouldnt have had this surge in unemployment and therefore panic IMO.
 
Athlonxp said:
The team I’m in has just started working from home this week and I know for myself it’s been a huge paradigm shift.
Not seeing anyone else during the day actually takes a toll on your mental health I have found...though it’s only been two days so far....but still a big change for myself at this time.
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Been the opposite for me. Being able to work in peace and quiet is a ******* joy.
 
Bar anything unforeseen I should be right work wise thankfully, still picking up plenty of overtime in the insurance industry.

I can appreciate it's a very different set of circumstances though for a lot of people right now, this is going to entirely reshape Australia's working landscape over the course of the next 12 months.
 
ash_1050 said:
Bar anything unforeseen I should be right work wise thankfully, still picking up plenty of overtime in the insurance industry.

I can appreciate it's a very different set of circumstances though for a lot of people right now, this is going to entirely reshape Australia's working landscape over the course of the next 12 months.
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and beyond as robots started doing a lot of the dangerous stuff in China delivering food cleaning etc
 
Government will hopefully announce a wage subsidy/replacement today.
 

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My boss rang me yesterday, get back over here now (to WA)if that's what my intentions are. They're fearing an imminent lockdown of the WA borders for all fifo workers and not just those from NSW.

I'm on the bus heading to Melbourne airport now. I've been told to expect to be away for at least a month.

We'll see what happens from here.
 
Herne Hill Hammer said:
My boss rang me yesterday, get back over here now (to WA)if that's what my intentions are. They're fearing an imminent lockdown of the WA borders for all fifo workers and not just those from NSW.

I'm on the bus heading to Melbourne airport now. I've been told to expect to be away for at least a month.

We'll see what happens from here.
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Look after yourself.
 
Gralin said:
Hope they do. Deferring payroll tax isn't going to get it done
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It‘s all a prelude to a long lockdown (4-8 weeks). While we need to get the health outcomes right we also need to make sure everyone has a roof over their head and food.
 
Messenger said:
It‘s all a prelude to a long lockdown (4-8 weeks). While we need to get the health outcomes right we also need to make sure everyone has a roof over their head and food.
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They've not made a great start on it.
They are not keen on telling people what is coming either from a safety net perspective or future restrictions.
That lack of clarity has already caused a bunch of people to lose jobs that might not have otherwise.

Hope they have a good announcement tonight on how they are going to keep people sheltered and fed through the lockdown
 
Gralin said:
They've not made a great start on it.
They are not keen on telling people what is coming either from a safety net perspective or future restrictions.
That lack of clarity has already caused a bunch of people to lose jobs that might not have otherwise.

Hope they have a good announcement tonight on how they are going to keep people sheltered and fed through the lockdown
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Honestly I think this is moving at a pace that governments aren‘t designed to react to. Society as a whole haven‘t done much better.

The good slice of the public haven’t covered themselves in glory here. They read the news but they continue to congregate and undertaken actions with a higher level of risk. The only way we can ensure compliance is to remove the temptation. That’s why restaurants can’t seat people and cinemas and beaches are closed. It’s also why they have to lock up arrivals from overseas in four star hotels. Many thanks to the Aspen Two.

Those jobs were going. Restaurants operate on tight margins and a moderate drop off for some period hurst pretty quickly. Hopefully those who were stood down can be grandfathered into the measures to be announced in the coming days.
 
Messenger said:
Honestly I think this is moving at a pace that governments aren‘t designed to react to. Society as a whole haven‘t done much better.

The good slice of the public haven’t covered themselves in glory here. They read the news but they continue to congregate and undertaken actions with a higher level of risk. The only way we can ensure compliance is to remove the temptation.
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Theres lots of mixed messages though go to school go to JB HiFi go to Coles and Bunnings dont go to the beach
 
The Dice Man said:
I live at my workplace so it's not affecting me too much, just can't leave, obviously, for things that need to be picked up. The Government here is covering something like 80% wages of those unable to work. My boss asked us last week if we can organise that for the staff here. :oops:
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Does he want to sack them or just wants the Government to pay 80% ?
 
Hawk Dork said:
Does he want to sack them or just wants the Government to pay 80% ?
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Oh no he doesn't want to sack them, then who would cook the food? Who would enter his password on his iphone when he wants to download an app(he doesnt know his password), who would unlock the gym door? Who would walk their dogs? Who would search on Netflix for the TV show they want to watch? Who would do the dishes, take the bins out? Who would reset the internet when it invariably crashes? Who would unlock the front door?

These are all things they don't know how to do. No he doesn't want to sack anyone, but would like it if the government would pay them instead of him.
 
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