Gone, never to come back

One of the most visible reasons for the great power that companies, especially big corporations, exert over their works is the unequivocal asymmetry of the relationship. Where as most workers act as providers of labor for a single "client", the company has hundreds or thousands of providers. In practical terms, when a worker quits, they give up 100% of their business for the time they are unemployed. In contrast, the company will barely notice the loss of one out of 1000 employees, or 100 middle managers. Even firing one of the ten vice-presidents can be relatively easy and only when you get to the level of the CEO the situation evens out a bit and any change in this regard rarely happens until both, the company and the departing CEO have identified suitable replacements.

The other problem is that change is hard, and the bigger the change, the harder it gets. There are three aspects that make any kind of change quite a difficult endeavor: establishing the need to change, determining the right point and direction of the change, and the execution of the change itself. The first one might seem trivial, since philosophers since time immemorial have postulated the need to "change or die". However, in order to undertake any process of change it is necessary first to identify the need to change (or the opportunity it represents) . Sadly, many people are either too sure of their ways to even consider change or too scared to try, and instead perpetuate themselves in unsatisfactory situations ignoring the alternative that might be showing left and right.

Photo: Dominic Wade

The second difficulty is determining when is the best moment to change and which direction to take. Change involves almost inevitably a certain investment, at least of mental resources but possibly also of time and money, that we aim to recoup in the future. But predictions are, as we have discussed before, hard because there are many hidden factors that might affect the outcome even if they are completely beyond our control. The arithmetic of change is easy: the cost of not changing (typically zero) plus the projected rewards in the current situation, versus the cost of change (typically quite substantial) plus the projected rewards in the new situation. Given that the change usually puts you in the red, it will take some time before the increased benefits from the new situation offset the cost of the change, and this is the key question that we need to answer: if the increase in the rewards is too small (or even negative) we will never recover from the loss, and we will have made fools of ourselves.

I would like to mention at this point that, while the monetary aspect of the rewards play a very important role in the calculation of the rewards, it is not the only one. In fact, the new generations are putting more and more emphasis in having engaging and creative jobs, even if they mean a lower pay, because they are not ready to spend their lives being miserable every single day. In that sense, the company culture in a general sense (the relationship with bosses and colleagues, administrative practices, dress code, office layout) can mean a difference big enough to trigger a change.

The third and final obstacle for change is the execution. Some changes are instantaneous and you only need one moment of bravery to put it through (e.g. handing in your notice) but other changes can take weeks or months, and every single moment the option to cut your losses and go back to the well-known situation which was "not that bad" is terribly present. In fact, it is like taking the decision again and again every single day, constantly revisiting your projections to make sure that nothing has changed substantially, so the change is still the right decision.

However, there is one situation where change is surprisingly easy: when it becomes the only option and your only choice is which direction to take. It is like walking along a path in the woods: most of the time the only sensible option is to stick to the path and keep walking; if you see a small path veering off into the trees you might stop to consider for a short while, but unless you have a reason (i.e. a lot to gain) you are likely to continue on the path you were... until you hit a wall. Scary as the woods might be, when the path is blocked by a wall that you cannot climb over, the only option is in fact to get out of the path. You might try to walk around the wall to see if you can continue on the same path, but even that means leaving your comfort zone and venture into the unknown. And the probability that you find another path that looks even more promising than the old one is not zero. Or maybe the distance you had to walk around the wall was so big that you do not feel like coming back to look for the old path.

This situation is precisely what many workers have experienced as a consequence of the containment measures mandated against the COVID-19 pandemic. Especially in the restoration and hospitality sectors, there were many employees who were less than happy with the money they were making or with their working conditions, but they were unable to switch jobs: the offers they found were not appealing enough or the risk seemed just too big. But once the lock-downs hit us and many businesses were forced (actually chose) to let their employees go, the decision became a completely different one: given that the loss associated to the change had already happened (they lost their colleagues and started to live off the unemployment benefits) they only criteria now is which job offers the best compensation. Before the pandemic hit, the stuck to a lower-paying job to spare themselves the cost of the change to a higher-paying one, but now that the cost is not there, they are not even considering going back to the companies they used to work for.

In the US, this situation is particularly bad for restaurant employees and other tipped jobs, which offered relatively low entry barriers but then had you stuck on a low pay and a big dependence on the "mercy" of the clients. By comparison, working at Walmart or an Amazon warehouse, grueling as the conditions might be, provides much better and regular income, and the expansion of their business thanks to the pandemic also means that they are in a hiring spree, being forced to lower their requirements to be able fill the vacancies.

Companies have traditionally welcomed the freedom to fire and hire as the business rises and falls, but in this case they might have overdone it. In other parts of the world, like Western Europe, many companies have chosen to furlough their employees (even to 100%) instead of firing them, because that freed the company from the immediate need to pay the salaries, while giving it the chance to recover them as soon as business picked up. For the employees, the situation was not comfortable, because unemployment benefits typically do not cover 100% of the normal pay, but they at least had reasonable expectations of coming back, so they did not have the need to look for another job. Even with this possibility, the lower tiers of many companies have seen some reductions, and whenever that happened the employers are now having a hard time to hire the workers that they let go. Because it might be hard to start a change on your own, but once it "happens" to you, why not try to make the best out of it? I wish you all a nice evening.