In this podcast and video I’m talking with Lars Schmidt who is building a database of resources of employers’ corporate communications about the current crisis and how they’re dealing with it, listings of companies who are hiring and several other #COVID19 crisis resources for both employers and job seekers in a document linked just below. You can find information on Twitter. Just search #CoronaVirusHR.
The link to the resource database is: http://bit.ly/CoronavirusHR
The database includes:
-Coronavirus Response Plans
-Articles & Resources
-How Companies Are Responding w/Remote Work & Children @ Home
-Employee Support Resources -Remote Work Resources
-Coronavirus Legal & Employment -How Recruiting is Adapting Law Resources
-Travel Impact -HR Communities and Support -Hosting Virtual Events
-Activities with Kids at Home
-Podcasts: Coronavirus Business Response Coverage
-Alternatives to Layoffs
-Companies That Are Hiring
-How You Can Help
-Case Tracking & Statistics
-Retail, Service, and Hourly Employee Updates
-Companies Giving Back/Supporting Community
-Publicly Announced Hiring Impact -Conferences, Travel Restrictions + more
Here is the transcript:
Hey, it’s Craig Fisher. I’m here with my friend Lars Schmidt. Lars how are you?
I’m doing. Alright, buddy. How are you?
Coping? I’m getting through.
Yeah, I think coping it. All right. Is kind of a that’s the best we can we can hope for right now.
it’s a weird time and as people who work from home on a regular basis,
this doesn’t change a lot for us accept that we’re not traveling the conferences we’re supposed to be speaking at or are getting your canceled or pushed back or changed a virtual events, and so that’s fine for you and me, because we have home office video studio set up and always ready to go for a lot of people. This is just completely new. They’re not around their coworkers.
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Everything is happening in virtual meetings and it’s just a it’s just a little strange I think.
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I mean, it’s a big adjustment. I mean, let’s be honest with this, it’s like, you’ve got tons of people who I had never or rarely work from home and at a massive global scale, you’re forced into that position.
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And obviously, we’re talking about a subset of the working population. There’s tons of people who don’t have the luxury of working from it. That’s a very different situation.
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But the folks that you yeah, it’s it’s not, you know, it is an adjustment you have to shift and so kind of seeing how companies are trying to do that seemingly overnight is a, it was interesting.
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And and, thank God, there’s tons of resources out there at help them adjust and talk about tools and you’ve been creating content around how to get better video from home and things like that. I think that’s really helpful.
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But we’re in this, like, weird in between period, as we transition to whatever this new normal is. And for how long it’s gonna last and try to develop our new operating rhythms and cadences. Right?
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allegis has been putting resources together for our providers on the side who are,
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you know,
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staffing vendors to our big customers as well as our teams who do the outsource work for,
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you know,
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Fortune,
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five hundred companies all over the world and,
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and giving the employers best practices as to how we’re gonna manage through this,
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how we’re going to do offers remotely and.
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And interviews, and and everything else, and it’s it’s it’s staggering the volume of information that needs to be out there right now. Yeah.
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Well, and so you have started putting together a very interesting document and library of resources for that kind of information. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about that?
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And I, I, I find this to be very helpful for me personally and I’m trying to add to it when I can as well. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s started a probably three weeks ago.
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I guess we should timestamp this, you know, it’s March twenty th, right now so about three weeks ago, I wrote an article for fast company around how HR leaders are preparing their businesses or a corona virus.
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And so I am with that was to this soon after cone,
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be a Coinbase open source there,
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a credit buyers,
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response plan document,
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which kind of became the first,
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you know,
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kind of our specific response plan a lot of other companies model off of and so I took that,
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and I created a bunch of other resources around,
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you know,
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get Labs work from sources,
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things like that.
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Because I, I, I knew that people are gonna need that kinda support and, you know, within about two days, the situation was changing so fast I realized quickly.
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That a static document was just not gonna work or the scale, and the complexity in a velocity the situation. And so I created a Google Doc, and made it open source where I kind of.
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With a lot of those resources I initially curated for the fast company article,
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but then tapped into my network and kinda push hard and said,
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hey,
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look,
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if you’re using anything that’s helpful added to this list if you’re open to sharing your own current viruses,
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mom’s plans add that to this list,
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in,
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within the matter of,
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you know,
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days it became a pretty massive list that was originally kind of in phase.
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One of the pandemic focused on current of Iris response plans conference cancellations is suspensions and companies that were limiting travel and encouraging work.
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Now, it’s kind of evolved now that we’re in what I would consider to be phase two the pandemic, you know, the conversation around, like, who’s suspending travel kinda moot at this point, you know, that’s happening at a global scale. And so now it’s kinda evolved.
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I still link to those resources and keep them current, but it’s now more focused on resources to support HR and business leaders and navigate this new normal.
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So,
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from remote work to,
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you know,
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legal ramifications to,
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you know,
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resources to help parents,
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you’ve got the kids at home now and juggling school and work and everything else to,
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you know,
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companies that are having lay offs to alternatives delay offs to help people realize they’re there,
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you know,
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that’s not your only option.
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There’s other things you can do to trim costs to just yesterday. I mean, it’s evolving still on a day to day basis where, you know, just yesterday, you know, Susan reached out and said, hey, it’d be great if there’s a section on there with companies that are hiring.
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And within a day, now, there’s, you know, probably thirty companies listed on there that are actively hiring and I imagine that piece will kinda get beeped out even more as, you know, a lot of companies cause and contract. They’re hiring.
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But others, based on circumstances are expanding that, you know, we wanna try to make this a resource as well for people. That are impacted by reductions and risks and lay offs to help them. Find companies. That are still hiring. Yeah. Real quick.
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I’m losing a little bit. When you turn away from this center, the Mike okay. I will I will use myself or that’s what happens when you get the directions directional Mike’s from there is a great podcasting. Mike. Not as great. For a, right yeah.
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So, I will, I will stay here, but you’re doing fine. Okay how yeah, anytime, buddy. Well, and so, speaking of that, it the, the companies that are hiring.
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So I, I think we talked about this allegis does work with CBS and they are one of the companies that are hiring, because they’ve got because I’ve got physical locations in, you know, so many parts of the world.
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And and because they have this a pharmacy distribution system,
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where you can mail order your stuff,
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right they’ve got lots of needs in warehousing and and call centers and getting the word out to the right audiences of people who.
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Are getting laid off is an interesting trick, right? I mean, there are the guidelines around ads you can target to certain workers. Right? And so I think.
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A broader message about where are the resources are and where,
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you know,
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I think this is a great resource for job seekers as well as employers and recruiters Alan Flor started the Facebook group around companies.
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That are laying off. So, the we know as recruiters, you know, who we can go find yeah. For some of these jobs. And now you’ve got the companies that are hiring.
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Still I included this document. We need to marry the two somehow a little bit and and get, I don’t know, some sort of searchable database. I feel like.
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I think what you’re seeing right now is, like, as this is, is unfolding so quickly, a lot of the resources are kind of hacked together, right? Like this Google Doc certainly hack together. I think there’s tons of Google Docs are popping up.
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That are great for collaborative editing, but they’re not elegant. Right? There they’re they’re hacked and so, I think that that will be the next phase of this like a, as, as things settle is not the right word.
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Because things aren’t gonna settle for awhile,
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but is it,
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as we,
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as we collectively make this shift from,
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you know,
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our,
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as normal to our new,
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normal and settle into that I think you’ll start to see technology and other platforms that can aggregate those sources and make it more you friendly make it more searchable.
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Right? So, it’s not just a static document with links something you can search by geography skill set. I mean, a typical job board functionality and database for talent. You know, I can see.
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And that would be, you know, if you’re a vendor listening to this in that space Hinton, that might be a great way that you can get back to the community is kind of creating that platform.
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Whether it would be like a LinkedIn or in the either whoever you’ve got the technology,
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you’ve got the infrastructure so,
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you know,
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creating something that lives outside of your,
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you know,
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kind of core ecosystem where people can upload their profiles and,
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you know,
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upload jobs at no cost I think that would be a great service for the community,
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because it’s gonna be.
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It’s gonna be a whole tile, you know, a couple of months at best you’re probably year. So wherever I think we can come together as a community to try to help streamline some of those things, and, you know, help job seekers, help, you know, humans that are impacted by this.
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I think that’s a real service. We can provide.
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This sounds to me, like an interesting project for my quantum work team. You’ve just given me a great idea. There you go.
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So, one of the things that I’m finding finding interesting is you’ve got some lists of alternatives to lay offs for employers right?
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And I was on,
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so,
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one of the great things that we’re getting to do now as,
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you know,
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recruiters and consultants and vendors,
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and in our space is get together on a regular basis on these kinda group calls,
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which we’ve kind of done here and there.
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But not nearly as often as we’re doing now, but we’re sharing ideas and resources, and just keeping each other sane right? From being locked up in the house, which is fun.
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But the, the cost wrote something recently.
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I was saying yesterday when he hears from employers that want to lay off recruiters, because they’re not hiring right now, he says, well, look, I wanted to take to lay somebody off.
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Right you can do that overnight. But then how long does it take to ramp? Somebody back up, if you want to hire them, it’s two months to find and hire them. There’s three months before they’re productive.
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The math doesn’t really work if you’re only going to be, you know, laying people off for two to six months.
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And and so you’re spending an average of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars more in man,
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hours training ramp up time and loss of productive productivity per person that you lay off,
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which I think is a,
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a fun math.
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Yeah, I mean, look, I think companies are, you know, just like, you know, people right people are are uncertain. They’re, they’re anxious. They don’t know the ultimate impact. This is gonna have over time.
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And I think for companies there, this just hit them. A lot of them. A lot of them weren’t really paying attention, you know, and so now, boom, it’s here, it’s changed seemingly for them overnight.
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And so, you know, there, the service industry right now is getting hammered.
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You know, people are saying home and so, you know, other industries I think, are are not necessarily as immediately impact, but there’s trickle down impacts from that whole sector essentially, being kind of shut down overnight.
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So, yeah, I think a lot of companies are are thinking about cost cutting measures. I think consultants and contractors tends to come first in that.
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I think that the, the aim of having that section for alternatives to say, like your default, maybe you headcount.
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There’s other things that you can do,
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and frankly you should do before you get to that point and even if you get to that point where you’ve done all those other things,
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and you still need to tighten in control,
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costs more,
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you know,
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there are alternatives to just flat cutting people and so I want to include some of those links just because again,
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I think as an HR community,
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we’re all experiencing this for the first time.
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Like, there’s lots of HR leaders that have been through different levels of diversity, but nothing quite like this. And so wherever we can to me, this is where open source.
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Shines because it allows people to see what their peers are doing, how they’re approaching things and, you know, use that to help inform their own strategy.
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And I think in particular when it comes to companies are getting to that point,
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having an idea of how other companies might be approaching that more creatively,
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without just traditionally saying,
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okay,
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we’re gonna cut ten percent of the workforce having an idea of what the,
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what those plans look like,
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I think it’d be helpful and ultimately,
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hopefully save some jobs.
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I think you’re right. No one was prepared for this clearly. Right? I mean, it’s, it’s just not possible. I think lots of positive things are going to end up coming out of this somehow.
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Right, I mean, advances in communication and technology and preparedness plans and, you know, there has to be a silver lining somewhere, but I think we’re looking at a, you know, a two year, long tail at the economic impact at the very least.
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But I heard recently, you mentioned a hospitality sector state governance right now are in this country responsible for response plans right?
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The, we’re not getting a lot of top down leadership from the national government on this. They’re leaving it up to the States. Some somehow makes sense.
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And somehow does it, but regardless they are out of space for the response that they have to give.
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To their constituents in in those states, right? So they’ve now got to release immediate, you know.
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Funds for those who are out of work because that that money’s now immediately available,
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they’ve got to answer tax questions and health questions and testing questions and all these things and they don’t have the space to put people far enough apart in call centers to keep them safe and they don’t have the remote work capabilities to set that up as
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well.
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So I’m hearing that hotel chains that are now not booking. Customers are offering up their large warehouses that are basically big call centers. Some state governments for this.
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So, interesting alternatives are happening in ways to.
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You know, turn some of this money that’s being dumped into. The economy are are springing up, which is fun. Yeah. I mean, look, I think that this is, you know, in the set of circumstances and adversity.
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Ingenuity is, we’re gonna we’re gonna see some really interesting examples of that. I think, looking at hotels, which are very under booked near hospitals.
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Like, I I see there’ll be a partnership there, you know, especially as the cases mountain, the hospitals become overwhelmed that they can take, you know, non current, the virus patients and put them somewhere else. So they’re, they’re not in that kind of IC level need.
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They can focus on more the high level trauma patients at the hospitals. That will be really if obviously video technology, and a virtual technology is gonna be massive, because it’s gonna be essential, you know, through this year.
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And so I think that we’ll see that. And and other other platforms, and hopefully can help, you know, bring people together, especially this, you know, I don’t I don’t wanna underestimate the, the impact of a physical distancing. Right?
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Like, you can, you’re if you’re doing what you can to really stay home, like, that connection to your fellow humans and your family, and all these people that you’re using all the time, and now you can’t outside of this, right?
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Through a camera that’s gonna be really difficult, I think, for people to to kinda process, especially over time. So I’m finding new ways to connect with each other and and doing it.
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Through a platform that is usually a, you know, every now and then thing and now it’s an, all the time thing. I think that’s gonna be a big adjustment but I think There’ll be some interesting technologies coming from that.
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Well, with that said, Lars, it’s good to see you.
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Gotta buddy, it’s always good to see you Craig. Thanks for this update.
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I appreciate it and keep up the good work fight the good fight and we’ll continue adding to this document and, and, you know, marrying technology to help employers and job seekers out.
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Well, thanks for having me on and spreading the word in the doc and take care of yourself and be well.
