Others though will find that being out of sight and out of their bosses' and colleagues’ minds is only a short step from being out of work. There are many who will miss the office, some sooner than they ever expected.
This was brought to mind when I got a phone call from a client and friend of mine. The instant I heard Brian’s voice I knew something was wrong. It was cracked, as though he was about to burst into tears.
What tragedy had befallen or was threatening to befall this 50-year-old built-like-a-tank friend of mine? All the possibilities ran through my mind in a flash. The sudden death of a loved one? A bad medical diagnosis? Had he become yet another victim of a fraud that had cost him his life savings?
No. It was his job. He blurted out his distress, and what he said worried me. I’d never before had a call from anyone who sounded seriously suicidal. “Brian”, I broke in. “Stop. You’ve got friends.”
This is why advisers shall never be replaced by robots.He calmed down. “This has come out of nowhere” he said. “It’s flattened me. I didn’t know where I could go or who I could ask for advice even. We don’t have a Union. Then I thought of you. I knew if anyone would have an idea what I should do, you would.”
We had a very long talk. Half-an-hour later we’d agreed a game-plan involving Debbie, a good employment lawyer I know. I called her and she spoke to him within the hour.
Brian is a graphic designer. He started out straight from school, qualified at university and for the last 20 years has been a senior and respected employee of a local firm employing around 20 people.
His work has included conceiving original, creative concepts involving well-crafted design, liaising with major corporate clients, and networking to bring in new business. I spoke to him just after the first lockdown.
He was loving working from home without the 90-minute each-way commutes. I asked whether he wasn’t missing the cross-fertilisation of ideas and inspiration that busy offices full of creatives generate?
It wasn’t a problem, he said. They had Microsoft Teams. Then, at the beginning of August, though still working from home, he was called into the office. Out of the blue, his boss presented him with a highly negative performance review.
Ambushed, he had not been given even the slightest prior intimation that there was any problem. He loved his job and those he worked with. He’d thought he’d still be with the same firm when he retired. Now, suddenly, he was in the departure lounge, made to feel incompetent and worse than useless.
Much of Brian’s work had originally been for the public sector. That went south in 2010 due to austerity and public spending cuts. Being a versatile individual he learned a new skill-set and moved into more commercial projects.
Everyone was happy with his work. Then, just as he was learning new skills around digital interactivity, wireframing, and animation, Covid-19 hit. Brian asked for training. None was given. Instead, he was told, “look at Adobe XD”.
Only one person in the company knew how to use the new software package they expected him to use, but he was never available to help or answer questions.
Bolt out of the blue
Brian was left to sink or swim so, being a determined swimmer, he worked late into the night, clocking way more time than his part-furloughed hours and found some relevant videos on YouTube.
He made serious efforts to retrain in the new technology but working from home was now a problem. It meant that colleagues to whom he needed to refer for help and advice were often unavailable. IT issues also became a huge challenge.
In the studio, somebody always had some idea of a workaround or fix, but not with remote working. Even sending work backward and forwards became a problem. Downloading massive files often meant leaving his machine running overnight to download the next day’s job, but that didn’t work when unplanned, urgent jobs were dropped on him at short notice.
Remote working also meant the end of the ‘buddy check’ system they’d used successfully for 20 years. The easily correctable mistakes that resulted were adduced as evidence against him in his ‘review’.
We build the kind of relationships that make us their first call when, like Brian, they do not know where else to turn.It is impossible to know what has gone on behind the scenes, but younger and lower-paid people have been employed and other more senior people like Brian have been made redundant.
He feels his employers want him out as cheaply as possible. In his absence, working from home, they have forgotten all the positive work he has done for 20 years. Empathy has vanished. Now they only see the negatives. hey have decided that an old dog can’t learn new tricks and isn’t worth the time it will take to teach them.
Brian’s trust in them, naturally, is gone. Colleagues he once worked with side-by-side have become strangers. Friends he trusted are friends no longer. His self-confidence is shattered and he wants out, so his employers will no doubt get what they want.
The value of advice
Thanks to Debbie though, it will at least cost them a lot more than might otherwise have been the case. This epitomises the value to clients of them being able to have the deeper conversations they need when a personal crisis hits.
This is why advisers shall never be replaced by robots. We are not in the money business; we are in the people business.
We are not intrusive or over-familiar. We keep sufficient professional distance as enables us to maintain our objectivity and likewise enables clients to tell us directly if they are ever unhappy about anything we do, without them feeling embarrassed.
I always find it creepy when advisers try to insert themselves too deeply into their clients’ lives. At the same time though, we build the kind of relationships that make us their first call when, like Brian, they do not know where else to turn.
That’s when they do not just have an adviser, they have a friend.
Neil Liversidge is managing director of West Riding Personal Financial Solutions
