Currently, the employment rate in the UK is staying at a steady 3.9% despite the Coronaviruspandemic which is all thanks to various Government schemes assisting and helping a lot of the companies in the UK to reduce the number of people they lay off. However, in the background, there are a lot of people losing their jobs with almost 2.1 million claiming unemployment benefits since records began in April to reach, according to official figures taken at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis. Another main reason why the unemployment numbers might not go down is that a large number of the people that either quit, were laid off, or called in all their sick days because of the pandemic, with no intention of getting back to work any time soon.
According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), it seems like the number of unemployed people in Britain could soar to almost 15% of the working population if the country experiences a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic. These changes would take the UK to a higher level than France, Germany and Italy, but lower than Spain, according to the Paris-based thinktank, which is funded by 35 mostly rich countries.
A majority of the jobs in the UK revolve around social gatherings and interactions, which has made working in the UK amidst the Coronavirus quite tedious. With the Government encouraging the country to stay away from offices and people, quarantine at home, only going out when needed and working remotely, there are few companies and jobs that end up thriving. Most of the other companies had to shut their show or temporarily put everything on hold. Additionally, most of the smaller and medium-sized companies found themselves in a difficult spot.
Furthermore, firms began making changes to the way that they functioned and started cutting costs wherever it made sense. The first thing that they started doing was laying off people with white-collar, administrative office jobs at a faster rate than other countries. Post that they began relying increasingly on computer systems to perform administrative functions, leaving job growth confined to professional and low-skilled operations.
Fearing a second wave of the pandemic in the autumn, companies began allowing staff to self-isolate if they discovered that they had coronavirus symptoms. Approximately half of all workers are employed in a job requiring significant physical interactions and therefore face a risk of contagion. Strong occupational safety and health standards, defined and enforced by public authorities should always remain a top priority. Additionally, paid sick leave can continue to perform a significant role in containing and mitigating the spread of the virus and protecting the incomes, jobs, and health of sick workers and their families. Furthermore, the Government mentioned aiding some of the companies through more of their schemes to get them further along.
Many of them started handling background checks of their employees by performing a DBS check. Since this would sometimes take a lot of time, it made sense for companies to handle the CRB check online, which was faster and just as efficient.