After a short digression, we return back to our major stressors at work series.
The next major stressor in line is the fear of being fired.
We noticed how the predominate part of literature mainly discusses the reasons for being fired that lay on the side of the workers.
As we said, our focus are major stressors at work.
For this reason we take a look at this issue from a different angle.
We try to encompass the common contemporary reasons and issues within a given company that cause the fear of being fired.
We believe it is not exaggeration if we say that we live in an unsecure and changing times in general.
This especially concerns the changes on the labour market.
Today, there is no way of knowing for for long you will keep a job you got.
If you plan to stay on the labor market, the best thing you may do today is strive for education in a thriving industry and constantly work on acquisition of the new skills.
In a contemporary labour market a switch was made from the promise of getting a secure employment to employability.
The term employability is very much connected to today’s gig economy.
In simple terms, this means that a skilled worker will more often be in a position to take part on a certain project, get her or his remuneration, gather some experience and move on onto the next project.
Therefore, it seems that the greatest accent today in the labour market is made on adaptability of workers.
In such a world, the fear of being fired is a tough reality.
We encountered numerous articles which try to convince the workers that the fear of being fired may be conquered.
Although we appreciate such noble attempts, we deem that such tries do not go side to side with reality.
One important thing that we noticed also concerns the fact that the authors of such articles rarely have some serious backgroung regarding the time spent and experience on the labour market.
Content coming from such lines does not have any useable value.
Our standpoint on that issue is clear.
We approve only speaking from experience.
In any other case such content may do more bad than good.
This is so because the readers exposed to the stress on the workplace may be tempted to try to apply the first thing that comes to their hands.
From our experience, the first thing is rarely the help of adequate quality.
Having that in mind, in this article we shall not even attempt to tell you that you can overcome the fear of being fired.
We can argue that you can forget about it for awhile, but as we see it that is often the best you may end up with.
We would like to hear from you your own experience and commentaries on the topic.
So, let us go over the reasons that cause a significant amount of being fired nowadays.
Staff redundancy due to technology
Every now and then a company is faced with the decision of having to lay off some workers.
There are multiple reasons that may cause the redundancy of workers.
We believe it is advisable to clear one issue before we head further on.
We lead a certain discussion awhile ago regarding exactly this issue.
During the discussion one question arose.
A partner in conversation tried to convince us that it is unneccesary to differ rationalisation from staff redundancy.
Our elaboration followed.
For the purpose of this article, we will try to repeat it in the main lines.
In practice, the main difference between staff redundancy and the consequence of rationalisation is the existence of need and existence of innovation.
Namely, staff redundancy is a term that is being more frequenly used in a case where laying off is not the result of need due to business results.
Therefore, where the need forces the company to lower the number of workers, with the need being anything that has the power to diminish business result, it is more likely that we are going to speak of rationalisation.
On the other hand, the term of staff redundancy is used more often in relation with innovation.
While rationalisation has a primary goal of cutting down the costs in order the to secure the running of the opeations, it is a different story with innovation..
So, when speaking about innovation, it has as its goal either the direct grow of profits or the fall of costs, which in return adds to profit.
In the case of innovation, the accent isn’t on lowering the number of employed workers.
Nor did the need to lower the number of workers existed previous to the innovation.
Quite the opposite, the surplus of workers may arise as a consequence of the application and implementation of a certain innovation.
In this case, it simply means that the workers are not anymore necessary for the conduct of operations which were the subject of innovation, not that they are too expensive to be supported by the company.
We are going to observe two such situations of staff redundancy.
Technological progress
To understand what technological progress implies, we first need to explain what is meant under the term technology.
Nowadays, many people confuse technology with some technical solutions, like some appliances or similar.
However, by doing so, they make a mistake.
It is true that appliances, gadgets, machines and so on rely on technological solution, but not one.
It is more like dozens of them.
For example, your new TV with ultra thin screen and unbelieveable sound is able to work beacuse of technological breakthroughs.
Without those, our TVs would still be with rounded screen and probably much much heavier.
In most basic notes, to get a flat and light TV the scientists had to find a way to to do things in a different way than they did before.
This could be achieved by using the same tools and materials or the ones that have been developed in the meantime.
The accent is on different, better and supperior.
On the workplace this boils down to cancelling some unimportant operations in one or more processes which earlier required an additional worker.
Similar is when two or more separate operations are replaced with one that is a combination of those or a completely new one which provides the same result without the cost of the additional worker.
It is only rational that companies choose to embrace such new technologies in order to save money.
So, it is also understandable that the worker which hear of such stories tend to become anxious and under stress.
This stories are often not just stories, but a future reality.
We have never ourselves been in such a position, but have only witnessed how many of the ladies doing some administrative work had to be layed off.
There just simply wasn’t the need to perform the tasks they performed.
If we were to connect that with the fact that these were workers in their high middle age, who probably did not attain any additional skills to simply move to another industry, you may start to see how huge impact this had on their mental health.
Automatisation
Technology may press workers out of the workplace in one these days broadly discussed way.
Most of us are victim to the COVID-19, despite the fact did we had this virus or did not.
The measures in effect which have the goal to put the pandemic under control in order to battle it on firm grounds undermined our liberty of movement and the possibility of social contact.
For this reasons and a number of others, this served as a catalyst to the automatisation of business processes.
Even without the emerging of this virus problem we were all aware that robots and machines were on the run to eventually overtake many routine and simple recurring tasks.
Therefore, we were aware that many jobs would be forever lost.
With the speeding up of this process due to COVID-19 even those were sceptic to these changes have to open their eyes and start adapting.
The scientists and expert in general convinced the public that is advisable to evade human contact when possible.
So, the automatisation of processes of any kind, especially of those where a multiple of hands worked on the certain product as well as those which play in the food industry, became desirable and preffered.
On the other hand, workers soon started to see that these events lead in the direction of replacing them permanently.
And it already happened in many places…
It is even hard to imagine the stress related agony and fear that workers went through everyday in expectation of losing their jobs.
Automatisation is just the indicator of how we have become dependent on the technology and how much we need it to keep our way of life.
Automatisation is closely related to the other field of our interest, organisational changes, these may both represent the intentional business strategies.
Organisational change
Markets everyday pressurize each and every company to re-inspect their inner structure, processes and measurable business result.
The result of such pressure is the inevitablity of change.
That is, if the company strives to survive.
The only constant thing is change.”
Heraclitus
Some of the forms of organisational change may even have a result of employing additional staff.
Such is the case when a company plans to introduce a new product or start providing a new service.
However, we shall abstain from discussing these forms of organisational change.
Our interest lies in the forms of organisational change which lead to the fear of being fired as a major stressor at work.
In these forms the organisational change fully responds to one of its defintions which takes into account that it is a tranformational process which tends to produce growth of the company as its main goal.
As we all know the growth is many time achieved over the back of the common worker.
The following forms of organisational change are all driven by the same motive.
That motive is to be cost effective as much as possible.
Relocation
In many industries the plague of relocation has already been present for around 50 years.
Textile and food industries are probably still the best examples of the successfully (for whom?) executed relocation.
Perhaps this is not so much of the interest to the most of you.
However, recently, even the high tech industry started to suffer from that phenomenon.
IT industry, automotive industry and medical services and equipment industry are perhaps some of the best examples of this new trend.
We have to accept the truth that the countries which once offered cheap unqualified workforce now offers cheap both qualified and unqualified workfoce.
We could always discuss about the human rights issue regarding the exploitation of the workforce and we could, while one of us is the lawyer, but we shall keep ourselves close to our main issue.
Although greatly disproportional, the relocation offers benefits to both sides.
The companies save on costs of workers, while the workers who agree to work on low (sad how low) salary are given jobs in order to survive.
Even sadder thing is that these job are quite secure due to the low cost of their upkeeping.
Such twisted simbiotic connection forming in growing number of industries leaves the workers who earn their salary in such industries in the constant fear that their workplace will be terminated, sorry relocated.
The natural reaction to such real threats is also the growing number of people suffering from constant stress and the fear of being fired due to the possibility that they could become redundant.
Suffering as a result of stress may bring on some more serious medical issues.
It is, therefore, always good to keep stress under control.
You can do that with Anti-stress app.
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Out of the box, it is also important to mention that relocation became an important political question.
So, it is not just up to the fear of the individual of being fired.
It comes down to the fact that in case of relocation many workers are in threat to lose their jobs in the same time.
On the other hand, unemployment means that a country has to offer some sort of a compensation for a while.
Countries usually finance such compensations from the funds gathered on the basis of taxes.
Well, in the case of relocation, it is always questionable if the tax has to be paid in a country the company is registered or in which it conducts most of its operations.
As you can see, a country could have a double problem as a result of relocation.
First, a higher unemployment rate and second, a gap between real amount and potential amount of funds that might have been gathered in case of absence of relocation.
Outsourcing
In some cases, companies decide it is more coest effective not to perform some of the operations, which may go beyond just business operations, in the premises of the company.
Such are mostly the operations which do not have to be executed on the daily basis, like providing servicing of the equipment or cleaning the premises of the company.
However, these may also be some operations which require daily execution, like providing access and support to computer systems and network, hosting included.
The act of delegating these and other tasks to some outer company or individual, of course with compensation included, is called outsourcing.
Many divisions in many companies today are confronted with the danger that their tasks are going to be distributed to outer partners.
Again, the need to achieve cost effectiveness proves to be one of the main criteria when deciding which operations to outsource and which not.
Sometimes, although the economic logic shows that the outsourcing may the best solution for the company, some factors come into play which hinder it.
It is so when the activities that may be subject to the outsourcing encompass tasks which require a level of confidentiality which could not be achieve outside of the company.
Nevertheless, outsourcing is another example of the danger that lurks on many workplaces and which in many cases strip the workers of their jobs.
In such an environment of uncertainty the fear of being fired and stress are commonly present.
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However, we must mention for some workers positive feature.
A certain trend is emerging.
Namely, killed workers, which were layed off due to the termination of their workplaces and contract sometimes found a privately owned company.
This company then participates in providing the outsourced services and tasks for the company they previously worked in or for some other company or even more companies.
Rationalisation
One further organisational change we have to cover, due to its frequency, is rationalisation.
Unlike relocation and outsourcing, rationalisation does not imply the movement of business and operations alike outside the company.
In its narrow sense it just means shutting down of some workplaces.
Also it differs form relocation and rationalisation in one other feature.
Namely, rationalisation is usually the term companies use and the action it conducts when the time for business are potentially or actually bad, like now.
The rationalisation is often related to a situation of macroeconomic crisis or a crisis which took hold over a certain company.
It is one of the strategies which companies try to apply in order to survive and save themselves from bunkruptcy.
In such a way they try, as we said, to conservate funds for the continuation of their operations.
The victims of such actions are exclusively workers.
When times are bad, workers usually tend to expect that they may be layed off.
The accent is on expectation for something negative to happen.
We witnessed how some of our friends lost their jobs in tough times.
But, the worst part wasn’t that they lost their job, but it was the fact that they were psychically exhausted due to stress they suffered everyday in fear
Crises
A separate, yet closely connected reason that contributes to a hightened fear of being fired certainly relates to crises.
We have been of luck (for the purpose of this article) that we experienced two crises in just a decade or so.
As we approach the closure of our article, we will briefly discuss how those crises contributed to the fear of being fired.
Crisis of 2008
We still remember the last great economic crisis that started on a home mortgage market.
So, let us see, how this played out.
First, bankers wanted to earn extra profit.
So, they gave loans even to people which did not meet all the prerquisites.
…with houses as mortgages.
This was ok until the price of houses rose.
The banks thought that they will return their investment by selling the homes even if people stop paying.
However, prices of houses started to drop.
Their price on the market was soon below the amount of money paid for them, below the amount of loan.
Logically, people stopped returning the loan.
Banks figured out that they have a problem.
With the price of houses dropping below the amount of loan, banks lose money when they sell them.
But, that was just a part of a problem.
When banks gave loans and took the houses as mortgages, they figured they could get even more money.
So, they sold mortgages on houses like any other property.
Ridiculous part is that everyone wanted to buy.
So, now you have a global problem.
Financial institution all around the world has those mortgages in their pocket.
As we said, when the value of the houses started to sink, they were all sold at a loss.
A great loss.
With losing so much money, companies had to introduce the measures of rationalisation.
Laying off represented one of these measures.
Fear of being fired went through the roof.
Soon, the fear of being fired came true. On the global level.
The level of unemployment skyrocketed.
The built up layers of insecurities paralyzed the global economy for a while.
The story continues on, but we will end it here.
You got the point.
COVID-19 Crisis
The second crisis we are going to discuss is the one that we are going through now.
The main source of this crisis is a virus.
Although virus cannot make economic decisions, it caused significant economic problems.
It brought fear and insecurity among customers.
So, they started buying less in a brick and mortar stores.
These problems were even more deepened with the all sorts of measures restricting our movement.
On the other hand, this gave a push to online shops.
We could elaborate further on, but it isn’t of interest to our story.
Among the workers in the brick and mortar stores a fear of being fired rose.
Again, that fear came through.
Many of the stores were decimated in the number of customers.
With the new trend of automatisation due to virus many of the former working places will be probably closed forever.
We could argue that these will be solved by vacancies in surging industries.
Yeah, but to a certain degree.
This is just part of the problem.
Many of the companies figured that their workers could equally efficiently work from home.
This already now triggers a fat new problem on the real estate market.
As the news come in, many of the workers in this industry fear of being fired.
Again, fear for which we deem will come true.
It only remain to see how this story will roll on.
Conclusion
Fear of being fired is a harsh reality.
It is reality especially now, in this unsecure period.
We personally fear that it is only going to be worse.
In our country when pople talk about the quality of life, jobs, security and similar they usually end the discussion with a phrase “It will be better.”
The problem is that it doesn’t get better.
With so many predictable and unpredictable changes around us we are forced to live in a constant phase of fear.
This slowly starts to eat on our mental health and gives rise to an abnormal amount of stress as an uninvited guest.
Our best friend is such insecure periods is our ability to adapt.
With that on your mind, we will call it a close.
Have some personal thoughts on this topic?
Comment below!