With the number of changes taking place to the economy in the UK, larger companies and smaller businesses are not sure how they would come out from underneath. Although the Government is currently running their furlough scheme to assist companies and reduce the number of people they are pushing out, they are paying 80% of their salaries with the company paying the difference, companies still cannot pay the difference and are laying people off.
Most of the companies managing some progress through the pandemic were the ones that were remote working. While the easiest solution to the puzzle revolved around changing the way that companies work to begin the process remotely, there were few issues with that. Not all industries had the possibility of remote working, several, such as hospitality, construction, healthcare, mechanical work, were all forced to be handled in person. While some were essential services and not allowed to shut shop during the pandemic, the others had to wait for a better time to begin reopening. Even companies that could not work online took the aspects of their work that could be done remotely, to the internet to get more people to begin working on it.
The unemployment rate in the UK was not as bad as in some parts of the world, but there was an increase after eight months of the pandemic. With people losing their job, many of them began working on their brand and promoting a talent or craft that they were good at. Smaller companies were more comfortable making a change and working online since they could implement these changes a lot easier than larger companies. There were even a few companies that had implemented remote working before the pandemic and had a specific number of days that they allowed their staff to check-in from home.
Most of the employees without experience, the beginners in the workforce, found themselves out of work. They did not have the skill to continue the job they had, and given no option, started working on individual projects. The older generation that was nearing retirement were not sure
what they were going to do since they could not get much work anyway and were not in the position to begin something new.
With all these changes, employers were not sure how they were going to keep an eye on all their employees. In most cases, they were getting the work done, online meetings attended, and deadlines met, but the overall productivity was not the same. To make sure these were people they could trust, the common practice was conducting background checks. While most
employers could use the DBS check to go through the people working for them or the prospective hires, they would receive information about their criminal records and other information about them. They would also be informed about their misdemeanours and if it was wise for them to interact with certain people, or if they had a bad reputation for interacting with children or adults. They could then gather this information and use it to make an informed decision about the person that is working in their company. Additionally, they could get more information by review the DBS certificate online, which would make the process a lot more convenient.
