Keep or Cut Workers? How Companies Reacted to the COVID-19 Crisis hbs.edu - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from hbs.edu Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Not surprisingly, companies that were hit hard by the pandemic downturn were much more likely to lay off employees, even if those companies had been in strong financial shape beforehand. But hard-hit companies that benefited from strong cash reserves were only half as likely as their financially weaker counterparts to impose layoffs.
“If companies had cash reserves, they seemed willing to use some of them to help their employees,” Lester says.
At least as important, however, was whether a company had previously made a strong commitment to treat its workers well. In fact, companies with strong finances but weak commitments to workers were more likely to lay off employees than were companies with similarly strong finances and strong commitments to their workforce.
April 30, 2021 SHARE
Welcome back to Class Acts, a celebration of the Class of 2021. This week, we celebrate three graduating students who are leaders in research Churchill Scholar Jessika Baral, Spencer T. Olin Fellow Chelsey Carter and U.S. Army veteran Alex Reiter.
Jessika Baral leverages her expertise in biology and computer science to advance cancer research. (Photo: Joe Angeles/Washington University)
It started back in middle school, when Jessika Baral got glasses and her dad was struggling with his cataracts.
“He suggested that we do eye exercises together,” Baral recalled. “Middle-school Jessika was not down for that.”
So she engineered a sort of sombrero festooned with LED lights. By following the blinking lights, users could strengthen their eye muscles. The results were so impressive, Baral was invited to the White House Science Fair, where she met her hero, Bill Nye.
(Illustration: Monica Duwel/Washington University)
March 11, 2021 SHARE
A city the density of Atlanta or Milwaukee, over a half-million strong, tragically has been wiped from the face of America’s future. Thousands of businesses disappeared, never to return. Millions remained out of work or hardly strayed out of their home, for work or play.
A dose or two of hope, however, arrived near the end of the pandemic’s first year in the form of not one, not two, but three record-breaking vaccines for the dreaded, unseen virus that causes COVID-19.
So where do we go from here, in the second year in these times of coronavirus?