Non-Essential Employee Nonsense

There is no doubt or debate that life in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic has been unprecedented. The question of work/life balance is being answered resoundingly: life is not secondary in that equation. Life - if not the lives we live then definitely life as we have known it - is out of balance in ways never experienced.

This coronavirus pandemic, and its domino effects, have relegated businesses to two categories: non-essential businesses (those not offering services, products, and goods that are truly needed) have been forced to close with no timeline for reopening, and essential businesses (those providing services, products, and goods that are definitely needed), have been allowed to remain open.

Within these companies, some of them, have made a delineation between their essential employees and their non-essential employees - despite the fact that their businesses were deemed essential. The question that has been rarely if not vaguely addressed, is how does an essential business have non-essential employees?

Perhaps this is not readily questioned because the act of going to work has become a life threatening activity, causing many of the employees in non-essential businesses to seek shelter in their homes and not question their status or its criterion Those working for essential businesses are undoubtedly happy to still be able to retain their income. The non-essential employees in the essential businesses will be treated as non-essential through the reduction of work hours, or elimination from work staff altogether.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

According to a Gallup survey taken before the pandemic, 43% of Americans (3.2% of the workforce) say they worked from home sometimes. That percentage has increased since the pandemic became widespread, displacing 75 million Americans from their workplaces in the process. The non-essential employees shuddered by the essential businesses, should, when possible, be in this group. And it is possible to transition them with the good leadership that addresses urgent workforce reconfiguration, if not redeployment.

Of course, everyone cannot work from home.

It's understandable that all businesses are concerned about their bottom lines during this pandemic, but as long as I understand that people make bottom lines possible, I will assert that any working employee, by virtue of their hiring, is an essential employee. Whether an employer views and treats them that way during a time in which circumstance - not competence - makes them a liability instead of an asset, will reveal a truth that's as insidious as the coronavirus itself.

I don't know a single employee that would refer to his/herself as non-essential, do you? That designation - whether nomenclature or perception - is a potential wake-up call for employees that needs to be recalled when companies get back to business-as-usual. Essential status, and escape from non-essential nonsense, exists elsewhere if one has the awareness and gumption to pursue it.