The UK Government was assisting companies in maintaining their furlough employees through the Government’s emergency wage subsidy scheme. While being one of the most popular plans in the UK, it helped companies hold on to their employees without having to let them go just yet.
Since companies could not handle paying all those salaries with the job market tanking, the Government scheme was assisting them by paying 80% of the amounts while the company had to pay the difference.
While sounding like a great idea, the scheme meant the Government was holding on to employees who companies were not sure they could maintain. The Government soon announced that they were planning on slowing down their scheme to allow companies to stand on their own.
With companies struggling to pay the difference of 20% of the salaries as well, they started letting go of their staff shortly before the expiration of the furlough scheme. A recent survey by the British Chambers of Commerce found almost a third of companies are planning to make job cuts in the next three months ahead of the end of the furlough scheme that they were running.
Smaller companies seemed to be doing significantly better than larger ones, with many startups in the IT space already taken to remote working way before the pandemic even hit. Furthermore, the newer companies were open to taking in the changes and upgrades to adapt because of the pandemic as compared to larger ones who had a lot of their processes already laid out.
They decided to go a step further and also open the economy for restaurants, bars, and pubs assuming those changes would significantly assist the entire system. They made an assumption that people trapped at home throughout the pandemic would use this time to come out and spend, which would ease the load on smaller businesses.
The labour markets are going to start feeling the weight of the economy now, toward the end of August, with employers having to begin paying portions of the wage subsidies. They are also
informed about the stoppage of the furlough scheme by the end of October, which is another change companies should prepare for.
With all these changes and a large number of people losing their jobs, companies have started handling background checks on their employees. While there are some checks, like the CRB
check, that people are allowed to carry out on each other, there are others that only employers can carry out of employees or prospective employees. The DBS check is the most popular one, handled by only employers since it provides more information than just a criminal record. It also goes through their background and provides information on how they deal with certain people which could be vital depending on the company hiring. To make the process easier, all of these checks can now be handled online with the person going through the test uploading information to match the requirements, depending on the application form.
