From redesigning at-work schedules to balancing pay between basic salary and commission in employment agreements with staff, John Gaughan, CEO of a global sales technology recruitment company, has suggested to a webinar audience this week.

Gaughan, CEO and co-founder of Finlay James and early careers sales and marketing firm Talentskowt, said that “doing separate deals” and “creating bespoke solutions” for individual employees will benefit both employer and employee, as the pandemic and resulting lockdown has shed greater light on how different staff members perform in different circumstances – with some unexpected outcomes.

For example, he asked, “Could work becomes more seasonal?”, with people working six days a week for a period and then not working for a specified time. Also, he said, some employees may have been able demonstrate their initiative and motivation by working from home during lockdown, while others including big-billers may tend to “making excuses” when they were unable to repeat office-based successes. 

The webinar focusing on the potential impact on attitudes to and behaviours at work on Tuesday [9 June] was an APSCo event with guest speakers Gaughan, director Verity Stokes of Katie Bard (an Angela Mortimer company) and James Bolle of Prpsfl. 

The discussion was built around possible scenarios identified by the data, insights and consulting company Kantar that could occur in the wake of the pandemic. In the Kantar report, ‘Anticipating the Balance of 2020’, the four scenarios that could play out are identified as: Close Call, Panic Attack (the two resulting from a one-time outbreak), Recurring Nightmare and Brave New Reality (based on the potential of recurring seasonal outbreaks).

Gaughan and Stokes’ companies shared furlough options throughout their companies so “no one feels like ‘you were furloughed; you’re irrelevant”, Stokes said.

Pre-Covid, Finlay James had previously experimented with what it called Project Freedom, in which employees were able to develop their own work schedule and location, and Gaughan acknowledged that it wasn’t universally successful. However, with the Covid experience as background now, he predicted: “The whole 35-40 hour week will go out the window.” Further, he predicted that commission will make an increased return to the recruitment workplace in a “blended approach”, with basic pay likely dropping to focus more on outcomes for productivity.

In the next six months in the recruitment industry, Gaughan said: “I see real positivity.” Under the Close Call scenario, “people dodged the bullet a little bit”, he said, adding that many companies “will have for the first time in years, sorted out their financial rubbish” and halved, or reduced by a third, their cost base. “They’re managing their business in a more productive manner.”

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