Communicating with furloughed employees

A couple of weeks ago, we shared a post on communicating with furloughed employees – how to do it, and why it’s so important. Since then, a couple of people have been in touch with us. They’re furloughed, at home and anxious. They wanted to tell us they’d shared our post with their management teams – and one of them wanted us to explain what it’s like when it feels as though work has abandoned you.

These are his words – and we haven’t used his real name, because he asked us not to. We’re sharing this (with our new friend’s permission) because we think it’s easy to take the view that furloughed workers are “taken care of” – and to turn your full attention to keeping the business running.

This conversation gives some insight into why communicating with furloughed workers is so important…

Wordtree: So how long have you been on furlough – and how long have you been at your company?

I’ve worked at the same organisation for many years – nearly two decades, in fact. Then in the last week of March, we all received an email telling us our workplace would be closing for two months and we were going to be furloughed.

Some of my colleagues were then asked to return after a week to keep essential operations running – and to fulfil the very small number of outstanding contracts. However, I wasn’t one of them. Which means I’ve been at home, not working, for the whole of April, May and June. It’s the longest in my adult life that I haven’t worked.

Wordtree: How has it been?

At first it was OK – I don’t think anyone realised really how long it would go on for. So for a couple of weeks, I caught up on jobs around the house and kept in touch with colleagues. There was a feeling that we were all in this strange situation together.

But then it dragged on – and some colleagues were called back, but the majority of us weren’t.

Financially, it’s a squeeze. I’m receiving the full government allocation of £2,500 – but normally I would earn more than £2,500. And the amount the government gives my company will go down soon – and God knows what that will mean. My wife and I have frozen our mortgage payments. We’re just hoping I still have a job at the end of it.

Wordtree: Do you know how long you’ll remain on furlough?

Officially, no. There’s a lot of rumour that our company will extend it until November – people who are still working have heard things like this being said and they share them on WhatsApp. But there’s been no word from on high about what’s going to happen.

Wordtree: Do you miss work?

It turns out that very mundane things I took for granted are important to me – like the routine of turning up to work and talking to my colleagues. Being productive and doing work that matters… I miss it now I’m not doing it.

Wordtree: Has your workplace been communicating with furloughed employees?

In the three months that I’ve been furloughed, I have received about six communications from my workplace – all of them very formal and like a lawyer wrote them. They have explained what I’ll be paid and what is happening to my pension. They’ve mostly been from HR in relation to voluntary severance consultation. No-one has made any attempt to ask us how we are or to keep in touch otherwise.

We were promised another update towards the end of last week, but it still hasn’t happened.

Colleagues who are no longer furloughed still receive a regular weekly update from senior management – and they sometimes forward it to us. This is an email we all used to get when we were working. But we don’t receive those now.

To be honest, I feel like I’ve already been cast off by the company. And the fact that the small number of people who aren’t on furlough get looped in on the company’s plans – and get thanked for their efforts – has created an “us and them” situation. There’s a small group of people who are in the know, who get regular updates from senior management – and then there’s the rest of us.

Our company has already gone through a round of voluntary redundancies and we know there will be compulsory redundancies to follow. Officially, there’s no greater chance of being made redundant if you’re on furlough… but it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like you’re no longer valuable to the company.

I’d like it if they could keep sending us the internal updates – and a text here and there just to say hi would be nice. I haven’t even heard from my line manager in three months.

And even if they have no news, they could get in touch and tell us they have no news.

Wordtree: Are you in touch with your colleagues?

Yes – someone organised a WhatsApp group quite quickly after lockdown – within a day or two. It was set up by one person who did it off her own bat, it’s not a company thing. 

It’s a double-edged sword really. It’s good to hear from everyone and stay in touch… but it’s also a rumour mill. So someone hears something from someone who’s back at work, and then they infer something from that and then they present it as though it’s fact.

The problem is that senior management aren’t providing any information – so the rumour mill fills the void.

I work for a large company and they must surely have the resources to just send a text once a week. But they don’t and so people worry and fill the gaps with supposition.

Wordtree: Have you been in touch with senior managers or your line manager to explain how the situation is making you feel?

No I haven’t. Part of me thinks they should know this without me needing to tell them. Part of me is afraid that if there are going to be redundancies, I don’t want to stick my head above the parapet.

But the whole situation does make you feel like you don’t matter at all to the company – like you’re just a number on a piece of paper. The company likes to say that we’re “a family” – but if I can go back to work, I’ll take down every poster I see with that on. If we are a family, then we’ve been disowned.

Wordtree: What would you like to happen?

Nobody is expecting the company to be able to get everyone back into work tomorrow, though that would be ideal. But I would like them to remember that we’re people, we’re worried – and that having information is better than having none. I’d like them to add our home email addresses to the weekly update, for one.

It would also be nice to hear from my line manager. There are only 12 of us in our particular team – yet in three months, the ten of us who are furloughed have heard nothing from him at all. Not one text, email or call. Not one word. Maybe he has been told he can’t contact us – but I don’t know why that would be – especially if it was just to say, “How are you?”.

I know that at the end of the day work is a contract where you give your time and skills in exchange for money. But our workplace always said it was about more than that. So I’ve volunteered for the charity events and I’ve worked extra hours to make sure we meet our commitments. But this situation shows that, no – it is just a contract. I don’t think I’ll ever think about work in the same way again after this.

Because let’s say I am called back. There are new ways of doing absolutely everything in my workplace now – from which door you go in through, to which desk you use, through to when and how you eat lunch. And that’s before you get into any of the technical side of it. However, I only know bits of this from the WhatsApp group. So if I do go back to work it’s going to take me time to get into the swing of things. If nothing else, management should see that it’s inefficient not to keep us informed.

We wish our new friend the best of luck – and we he gets back to work soon. The feelings he shared with us highlight many of the reasons that communicating with furloughed employees is so important:

  • Being mindful of employees’ mental health and wellbeing
  • Living up to brand and cultural values
  • Maintaining loyalty and reputation
  • Attracting and retaining the best talent
  • Making getting back to work as efficient as possible

Across the UK, more than a quarter of the workforce remains on furlough. And in some towns, almost one third of the working population is furloughed.

For many people, this is the longest they’ve ever not worked. And for most, the continuing situation means stress, financial insecurity and worrying if their job will be there at the end of it all.

Communicating with furloughed employees doesn’t have to be difficult or resource-intensive. Find out more about how to do it here. And if you want to chat about communicating with furloughed employees, you know where to find us.

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