Building Resilience When Facing Recession

2. Let’s Look At Company Layoffs Meta waived its 11,000 employees, while Amazon laid off around 18,000 corporate jobs to control costs. With this, Twitter laid off almost 50% of its staff (although we cannot precisely point to the recession in this case). Also, Microsoft, Stripe, and Salesforce have dismissed their employees in concurrence with the economic downturn. As the US recession aired out, it marked a significant departure for the engineers and developers, who have enjoyed huge pay and job perks, considering how tech boomed over the past decade.

3. Impacts of a Global Economic Downturn • Last year, these same tech companies were signaling their investors that their boom was nearing its end. Amazon, the first tech giant, warned about over-hiring their warehouse customers built in anticipation of higher customer flow. This perception was locked in during the coronavirus lockdown when a customer had immense buyer-power mode (considering online mode was the only available option). Now, as things shifted out of the pandemic zone, the nature of the buyer has also changed. • With not so officially coined known as the ‘white collar recession,’ these layoffs are in high numbers. Like a dynamo effect of what happens during an economic downturn, it has spread across several well-funded companies (all under the anticipation to control cost, marginalizing their over-expensed hiring structure, and finding a way to clean up their post-pandemic perceptive corporate decisions). This indicated how the recession is coming.

5. How to Take Advantage of a Recession • Retention: CEOs and COOs pro to hiring remote employees have indicated that hiring outside the boundaries has made their companies more recession-resilient in these aspects. Employees experience new fulfillment when working from home, and it will be hard for companies to justify when walking that back. With that, turnover (and fixing problems) is expensive (as quitting rats remain above pre-pandemic levels). Companies are now hesitant to hemorrhage talent in this tight labor market; it stands correct for high performers, even when the economy sours. • Recruitment: When you are open to hiring remote workers in the economic downturn, you are now open to a more extensive geographical area and a large, untapped market of talents. Decision makers have been especially attracted towards Indian remote talents due to their huge availability, resourcefulness, and adaptive nature. This adds a major advantage, especially for roles where candidates are hard to find. Offering work flexibility adds to the company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion aspects, supporting your company on ethical and financial grounds. • Space: Estate requires money, but a structure where the operable system is efficiently working remotely saves more than 60% of the cost of office space and its associated expenses like office utilities, cleaning, and security. As per the NBER report, remote work preference has led to a decline in demand for many commercial real estate and consequent rents.