“Who knew what the word furlough meant pre-Covid? Jump forward a few months and over 6 million people in the UK have been furloughed.”
Who knew what the word furlough meant pre-Covid? Jump forward a few months and over 6 million people in the UK have been furloughed and most of us know someone who has been affected by it. Eight in ten workers in the hospitality sector have been furloughed and the news that furlough is being extended beyond June has been positively welcomed. At the same time, many hospitality businesses are concerned about losing quality staff during the lock-down according to CGA’s Business Leader Survey.
For the people who are on furlough, it is already a time of uncertainty and with the scheme’s extension, they are likely to feel more anxious than ever. They will be looking to their employees for both information and reassurance. The way you behave now towards all of your employees is likely to have a lasting impact on them and how they feel towards your business as things start to recover.
If you haven’t already developed a flow of communication for furloughed employees – do it now. If you are already doing it, keep re-evaluating how you can continue to keep furloughed workers engaged over an extended period of time.
The big question – especially now some employees may be furloughed for a further three months – is how you communicate with furloughed staff. And how you continue to make them feel valued when, under the rules of the scheme, you cannot communicate anything work related while they are on furlough.
Here are some helpful points from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations on communicating with furloughed employees which I hope you will find useful.
Tips for communicating with furloughed employees
· Treat furloughed workers as a separate target audience. Ask them what information they’d like to receive from you. What do they need to hear?
· Possible content themes might include company updates, furlough updates, wellbeing tips and signposting to support that’s available and opportunities for online training or volunteering.
· Before you do any communication to furloughed employees, make sure you speak to your legal and HR representatives and seek their advice. It’s essential that your organisation is clear on what is and isn’t allowed when people are on furlough.
· Avoid using work email addresses for communication where possible. Some organisations are asking furloughed employees to opt-in with their personal email addresses if they want to receive updates from the organisation. Again, this isn’t mandatory, and colleagues don’t need to share if they don’t want to.
· If you have a mix of furloughed and non-furloughed employees, then you will need to make sure that non-furloughed employees are aware of the rules in place and also who has been furloughed in their teams, so they don’t chase for work or information.
· It might also be worth asking your employees to add a note to their out of office about being on furlough. Or get your IT team to add on their behalf.
· A few organisations have set up specific WhatsApp groups for furloughed employees so they can provide wellbeing guidance and keep them updated with official updates. Before you set-up this group, make sure you check with your legal team. Colleagues should not be using their work number to join this group, and no work-related information should be shared.
· If you want to keep colleagues informed with non-related work such as voluntary opportunities, wellbeing tips, etc. then you may want to consider creating a newsletter specifically for this group, so they still feel connected to the organisation. Again, this should only be opt-in and not mandatory.
· Line managers need to be briefed about what is and isn’t ok in terms of content to share with their teams and also support those in their teams who might be impacted. It’s also important that they don’t forward things on to those on furlough from the organisation as this would be counted as work related content.
