Tag: Interview

Pandemic, isolation and lockdowns are today the equivalent of unemployment, poverty, bankruptcy and financial fraud. How has the pandemic affected ethics and how has it transformed corporate culture? Why exactly wearing masks causes aggression in people? What pain points in business, work and family did COVID-19 reveal? Tells Sofia Azizyan, HR policy expert, partner in the audit and consulting company Ernst & Young.

– Is the increase in the number of cases of financial fraud, especially related to IP telephony, a worldwide trend?

– Yes, this is a global trend associated, among other things, with the fact that many people have switched to telecommuting. After all, at home they work in IT systems, which may not be well protected and encrypted. Big questions for the Zoom platform.

Also, employees send business mail through open communication channels, for example, from personal mail. If a person works from home or in a coworking space, the likelihood that hackers will break into traffic or crack your password (and as a rule, it is always quite simple) and enter your system is much higher. For example, the company does not recommend our employees to work and open secret files on the hotel Wi-Fi; there is a prohibition to use personal mail to transfer information related to work issues.

In addition, today it has become much easier to obtain personal information, just use the page on social networks. And when a person calls you and names your personal data: date of birth, patronymic, then you get the impression that they are calling from any organization. There are cases when they call a bank card number, a code word – but there is clearly some kind of insider information from banks (from former or current employees) or, which also cannot be ruled out, this is a good job of hackers. Now there are more frequent situations when fraudsters manage to withdraw large sums even from the accounts of cunning businessmen.

– After the pandemic, will offline return completely or the transformation of corporate culture that has begun is irreversible?

– Online will remain. The reason is the economic crisis, which is forcing companies to cut costs as much as possible, and office rent is quite a significant expense, so there will clearly be workspace optimization. Let me draw an analogy with our offices in London and New York, where rent is expensive. They sent employees to work from home long ago and kept areas smaller than, say, we could afford some time ago. They have optimized costs. Employees came to the office or for collective work meetings, or for networking, such as teambuilding.

I think that the staff will work on a flexible schedule, but when the pandemic is over and it becomes possible to return to the offices, the teamwork will definitely take place live. The corporate culture is transforming.

I cannot say that it is getting worse; on the contrary, a flexible schedule allows you not to be stuck in traffic jams on the way to the office and makes it possible to live outside the city, independently allocate time for work, family, sports – there are many advantages.

– Attitude towards masks – why did this attribute become a bone of contention?

– I suppose that restrictions cause rejection. Both the British and the Americans still went on strike against restrictions and isolation. And then there is the example of Sweden. On the one hand, time will show how effective their model is, on the other hand, there was no collapse in the country, the mortality rate is now not much higher in comparison with other states.

People look at Sweden and understand: what is the point for them to go through all these restrictions, when their business collapses, they lose their jobs? And masks are simply something to which they can direct their anger of dissenters, a certain attribute that causes aggression. Like a small child hits his toy when there is no other way to show protest.

In Asian countries, where masks immediately took root, people wore them even before the pandemic (if they got sick or during the flu season, SARS), and no one went on strike against them. Personally, I find it easy to put on a mask indoors. I read the studies of both British and Australian scientists: there is no closure of oxygen access and there is no excess of CO2. Doctors work like this all their lives, surgeons operate in masks for ten hours and do not suffocate. It’s more of a psychological aspect.

In addition, it seems to me that such a strong protest is also due to the factor limiting freedom: cameras, surveillance – conspiracy theory. People are afraid that now everything is known about them, and the states or unscrupulous people will use it. Perhaps their fears are partly true. Such risks are potentially there, but nevertheless, the risks of infection upon contact with the virus are high, so I am in favor of observing medical recommendations.

– How legitimate is it to fire people for a decrease in efficiency in the remote mode and not pay money when they are laid off?

– It is completely wrong, especially when it comes to people with small children.

I have not come across many cases where I would be fired for reduced efficiency. The layoffs are largely due to the decline of the business as a whole. Many small and medium-sized businesses that I know sold personal assets to pay at least the minimum wages to employees. They tried to keep their team. This is on the one hand. On the other hand, my team has employees with small children, and with elderly parents, and those employees who are initially disciplined and responsible, the pandemic and the transition to remote work did not affect. And employees who were not responsible and disciplined naturally lost their effectiveness, because now it is difficult to hide incompetence and become leaders at the expense of someone else.

My guess is that there have been completely unfair layoffs, where unscrupulous executives simply took advantage of the general situation. But in the future, such actions will affect their reputation, because today, in the era of social networks, it will be difficult for an employer to hide the facts of illegal behavior. The only excuse for this situation is the bankruptcy and liquidation of the company.

In countries like Germany or France, where there are very strong trade unions, illegal dismissal is simply impossible. And in the United States and England, where the support of trade unions is not so strong and the legislation itself is rather on the side of the employer, it is easier to fire people.

Another important point is the low legal knowledge of the population. Many people, not caring about the future, often do not pay due attention to the execution of employment contracts, which must be read very carefully. If you are not able to figure it out on your own, you need to involve lawyers so that in the future you do not find yourself in a situation where they do not act with you within the framework of labor legislation, and you cannot prove anything.

It seems to me that the pandemic has become a kind of trigger and has revealed all the weak links in work, personal life, and health. After all, when people live with the belief that tomorrow will always come, there will be money and bread, then they have a dragonfly strategy from a famous fable. And then suddenly a force majeure situation ensues, when you need to save and live within your means, correctly formalize contractual relations, revise intra-family ties and build them in such a way that there is a person nearby who can support both in grief and in joy. Perhaps, in the future, this knowledge will be useful to us – such a moment of truth! Of course, it would be better to find out all this in a different way, but this is how this leap year turned out, and we have nothing left but to change in conditions of instability.

Interviewed by Elena Nedelya