Remote Workers Post COVID Can No Longer Be Used to Cover Up Layoffs

By: Stephanie Diana Wilson-Eubank

As economies change and shift many organizations choose to do layoffs to balance the budget as needs and funding shifts.  However, the risk in this is companies especially large ones end up on the news for mass layoffs which can make investors have trepidations.  So, since the financial crisis of 2008 many companies have mirrored what Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer in 2013 instituted.  The process referenced is move location of company and pull back all remote workers to the office and all those who can’t or don’t relocate are laid off as a part of a reorganization. 

There is an article in Forbes from 2013, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2013/02/25/back-to-the-stone-age-new-yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-bans-working-from-home/?sh=2b436b451667 the CEO comments on how the re-org was meant to help improve collaboration and that needs side by side work.  Other companies in various fields of business have used a similar method using the guise of a re-org to hide a need for mass layoffs from the public.  There is also a wonderful book I came across in my dissertation research on this concept, https://www.holloway.com/g/remote-work/sections/reorganizations-or-layoffs# is where you can find more information by Katie Womersley an Jun Pablo Buriticia. Per the publisher we need to reference the website, Holloway.com for the book and Katie Wormersley, Juan Pablo Buriticá et al., The Holloway Guide to Remote Work, ed. Courtney Nash (San Francisco: Holloway, 2020). Available at https://www.holloway.com/g/remote-work/about.)

Fast forward to 2020 and now in 2021 we have many of us working from home that can.  And remote work is revolutionizing the business and economy field of study and practice.  There are several articles about how remote work is evolving into a normalized concept in labor.  Such as the following:

• https://hbr.org/2020/08/is-your-organization-ready-for-permanent-wfh
• https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/17/worst-work-model-of-the-future-its-not-all-office-or-fully-remote.html
• https://bhcagroup.com/remote-workforce
• https://www.outsite.co/blog/how-to-restructure-your-office-for-the-future-of-work

Directly the shift to remote work caused by COVID has made opportunities for business to evolve and join a more quickly evolving economy.  Although, indirectly it has taken away a method of hiding a need for layoffs and providing more transparency for investors and employees. 

Another bright spot from COVID is that the trial by fire of companies switching to remote reportedly showed no hinderance in productivity.  Which proved that remote workplaces can be balancing for employees and productive for employers.  It is time to embrace the here and now.