Imagine that a business you built over ten years is going to go public in 2020. Then comes a pandemic that makes people wary of health and safety. That was Airbnb. They had to lay off 25% of the people. The way it was done is a model for many others to follow. They tried their level best to help people find other career options by engaging an outsourcing firm. Finding another job seems really hard for most people. You must read the shocking statistics for layoffs in India here
The most fascinating story of the week is clearly how Steve Jobs got 219 patents AFTER he died. How did that even happen? Jobs got 620 patents in his life time. And then there is a story about how trust between colleagues takes a beating when you do not meet in person. Yes Zoom does not cut it. It is efficient but does not build trust.
With all the layoffs happening worldwide, employers must help employees find their next opportunity. Appointing an outplacement firm to help with career transition and job placement. An outplacement firm can help with resume writing, confidence-building, interview coaching and smoothens the transition. Outplacements are the way to go. Airbnb tied up with a top notch outplacement firm RiseSmart .
How do you learn a skill which is not yet being taught in a college & has no standard curriculum? Would you like to have job where you are highly satisfied? Of course yes… but you may be paying a price for that. Why 5GB of data storage would have been a disaster. All these in this week’s newsletter.
Tesla creates a “digital twin” of every car they sell. Data from the real car is sent to the digital twin in the Tesla office. It lets Tesla update the software in a car remotely even as it is being driven. Singapore city has a digital twin to help plan its services. Should humans have digital twins? Celebs are creating their own digital twins. Should you? But first, do you really want passionate people when you hire? And if you are a passionate person, can you monetise your uniqueness?
Whereas previously, the biggest online labor marketplaces flattened the individuality of workers, new platforms allow anyone to monetize unique skills. Gig work isn’t going anywhere—but there are now more ways to capitalize on creativity. Users can now build audiences at scale and turn their passions into livelihoods, whether that’s playing video games or producing video content. This has huge implications for entrepreneurship and what we’ll think of as a “job” in the future.
Do you hate selling your ideas through video calls? All of us now run meetings, give presentations and even sell ideas through video-conferences. People simply take whatever they would have done in person and present it through the camera. Teachers across the world are offering their classes online. That experience of learning online through videos is so bad that several students plan to defer their admission to next year when they can attend classes in person.
Burnout is often a result of wanting to be perfect and hence taking many more hours to complete projects. People who are pessimistic are also more prone to be pulled out at work. Burnout is a real challenge in these times. What should do to avoid burnout?
People Analytics will undergo a big shift. How do we build a people function that is relevant for the post-Covid world? HR will need to offer measures of productivity, engagement and skills. Analytics can be a great conversation starter, because it is hard to argue with insights that are data-driven. This book can be a good read for everyone in HR. The line that stayed with me was, “HR will not be replaced by data analytics. But HR people who do not use data and analytics will be replaced by people who do.”
