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Friday, August 1, 2025

30 per cent in projected

lay-offs in next 3 months 

by

Kyron Regis
1902 days ago
20200517

Af­ter sur­vey­ing 148 ex­ec­u­tives in T&T and the Caribbean in April, HRC As­so­ciates in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce has found that al­most one third of the CEO’s are ex­pect­ing staff sev­er­ances in the com­ing months. 

The sur­vey dis­closed: “Present­ly, how­ev­er, 30 per cent of ex­ec­u­tives are an­tic­i­pat­ing some staff re­trench­ment with­in the next three months.”

It con­tin­ued: “As a less per­ma­nent mea­sure, 34 per cent of re­spon­dents ex­pect that they will need to tem­porar­i­ly lay­off some staff dur­ing the same pe­ri­od.”

In March 2020, six per cent of re­spon­dents stat­ed that they were like­ly to re­trench staff when sur­veyed. The in­crease in staff cut­ting ex­pec­ta­tions comes as many busi­ness­es re­main closed as T&T’s re­open­ing of the econ­o­my is be­ing done on a phased ba­sis­--a de­ci­sion made by the gov­ern­ment with which many in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty have found is­sue. 

Ac­cord­ing to the sur­vey, the com­pa­nies that are re­ceiv­ing less than $100 mil­lion in rev­enue ex­pect to be more im­pact­ed than the com­pa­nies whose rev­enues ex­ceed that amount. 

Of the or­gan­i­sa­tions whose an­nu­al rev­enues were less than $100 mil­lion, 41 per cent of ex­ec­u­tives ex­pect fur­loughs to oc­cur in the next three months, while 37 per cent re­port­ed that they may re­trench staff dur­ing the same pe­ri­od. 

In con­trast, on­ly 29 per cent and 19 per cent of ex­ec­u­tives from com­pa­nies whose an­nu­al rev­enues ex­ceeds $100 mil­lion re­port­ed that fur­loughs and re­trench­ment ex­er­cis­es were to be ex­pect­ed with­in the next three months re­spec­tive­ly. This can be in­ferred as these larg­er rev­enue earn­ing com­pa­nies are well cap­i­talised and have the abil­i­ty to with­stand eco­nom­ic troughs. 

In the face of in­creased lay­offs and un­em­ploy­ment, 56 per cent of re­spon­dents to the sur­vey rec­om­mend un­em­ploy­ment ben­e­fits and 55 per cent be­lieved that the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a na­tion­al job re­train­ing pro­gramme for in­di­vid­u­als who be­came un­em­ployed as a re­sult of COVID-19 would be ben­e­fi­cial.

Mean­while, when HRC As­so­ciates sur­veyed em­ploy­ees, of the 2,447 par­tic­i­pants sur­veyed, 88 per cent  are still em­ployed, eight per cent were tem­porar­i­ly laid off, and four per cent were re­trenched since the be­gin­ning of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Of those sur­veyed that are still em­ployed, 85 per cent were work­ing from home, 79 per cent at­test to no change in salary or wage rate, 64 per cent have ex­pe­ri­enced no de­crease in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty while work­ing from home and 77 per cent agree that their em­ploy­er cares about their well be­ing. 

The sur­vey al­so in­di­cat­ed that the ma­jor­i­ty of still em­ployed re­spon­dents (74 per cent) are at  least some­what con­cerned about job se­cu­ri­ty as a re­sult of COVID-19.

Of re­trenched em­ploy­ees, 30 per cent came from the sales, re­tail, ser­vices, and dis­tri­b­u­tion sec­tor, 21 per cent from the gas & oil and en­er­gy ser­vices sec­tor and 20 per cent from the hos­pi­tal­i­ty, en­ter­tain­ment, and tourism sec­tor.

How­ev­er, the ma­jor­i­ty of re­trenched work­ers did not re­ceive any part­ing com­pen­sa­tion from their em­ploy­ers; 84 per cent of these re­trenched em­ploy­ees re­port­ed that they did not re­ceive a sev­er­ance pack­age or gra­tu­ity up­on their sep­a­ra­tion from the or­gan­i­sa­tion and on­ly two per cent stat­ed that they were of­fered ca­reer man­age­ment ser­vices/out­place­ment ser­vices by their for­mer em­ploy­er.

Where­as on­ly, 13 per cent of re­trenched work­ers re­port­ed that they have an al­ter­nate source of in­come to sup­port them­selves and their de­pen­dants. When asked how long they be­lieved they would be able to sus­tain their ac­cept­able stan­dard of liv­ing be­fore ac­quir­ing an­oth­er job, 51 per cent re­spon­dents said one to three months. 

Ac­cord­ing to the find­ings, 24 per cent stat­ed that less than one month was the time­frame be­fore they tran­si­tioned in­to bare­ly get­ting by. For 20 per cent of re­spon­dents, al­ter­na­tive sources of in­come would prop up their stan­dard of liv­ing for three to six months, while four per cent would have an ad­e­quate liv­ing stan­dard for six to 12 months. 

On­ly one per cent of the re­spon­dents ex­pect­ed that they could main­tain their stan­dard of liv­ing for more than 1 year.

Of the tem­porar­i­ly laid off em­ploy­ees 51 per cent were some­what con­fi­dent that their em­ploy­ers would call them back out to work, while  23 per cent were very con­fi­dent and 26 per cent were not con­fi­dent.

The rea­sons for the cur­rent and ex­pect­ed lay­offs can pos­si­bly be due to the fact that an 83 per cent de­crease in con­sumer de­mand and spend­ing was re­port­ed by ex­ec­u­tives in the sur­vey. Ac­cord­ing to HRC, the fig­ure is more than dou­ble of what was re­port­ed in the March 2020 sur­vey. 

In ad­di­tion to the de­crease in de­mand, 76 per cent of the lead­ers sur­veyed ex­pect that there will be a de­crease in their pro­ject­ed 2020 rev­enues. As a re­sult 91 per cent of these CEOs have im­ple­ment­ed cost con­tain­ment mea­sures to bet­ter man­age cash flow and safe­guard the fi­nan­cial po­si­tion of the or­gan­i­sa­tion. More­over, 90 per cent of ex­ec­u­tives plan to or have al­ready re­viewed their Hu­man Re­sources strat­e­gy to op­ti­mize work­force ca­pac­i­ty and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.


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