I don’t know about you but I had never heard of the word furlough until lockdown - had you? Now unfortunately we are all too aware of what it means. The British Chamber of Commerce, state that more than 70% of organisations have staff furloughed. Certain sectors have been more widely affected than others and Alexandra Kalev’s research has outlined the significant impact that this is having for women. The industries that have been hardest hit are service based, such as the hospitality, tourism, domestic service and retail industries where the gender split is skewed towards females, ethnic minority groups and part-time workers.

If you have been furloughed then this unexpected pause to your work and career will have a knock on impact and you’ll no doubt be feeling a mix of emotions. Everyone that I have spoken to so far have said that they would like to use this time as an opportunity, but before you start to dash about, STOP. Take a moment and think about your career so far and how hard you’ve worked. If you have been furloughed with a regular review then you may want to take the first few weeks to simply rest.

Let me ask you this question,

When was the last time that you had breathing space from the office and work, where you could think about how you would like to use your time - for yourself? I suspect hardly ever.

So don’t put yourself under pressure to have an immediate plan to do something straight away.

Pryor & Bright’s (2011) Chaos Career Theory, is useful to share with you - it isn’t looking at your career being chaotic, rather it focuses on 3 areas; Change, Chance and Complexity.

Change - how adaptable do you think you are? You’ll have seen how you adapted to the day to day challenges of being in lock down and this won’t have been an easy transition to do. Adaptability isn’t something that you may think of but we know that the ability to deal with change and uncertainty are highly desirable skills with 91% of HR managers stating that these are sought after skills. You can see why though - with an expansion in automation and technological innovation, the demand for soft skills will naturally increase; communication, collaboration and your agility to adapt to change.

• From a career perspective, you could use this time to think about where your strengths are in relation to adaptability. I bet you have examples of taking on and learning some new tech, improving processes and systems that weren’t in place even 2-3 years ago.

• How confident are you that the skills you have now will continue to remain relevant? In your sector, are there industry trends that can help to pinpoint the future direction of the skills and experience needed in your field. You could use this time to sign-up to online training courses that will bolster your CV.

Chance - if you were to look back over your career, there will have been chance events that have led you down a particular route or opened up possibilities that you had never thought of before. If you were to look at chance, you’ll see that it will have had an influence on you - friends, family, role-models, economic climate, culture, geographical location, education etc. the list could go on. John Krumboltz’s, work on Planned Happenstance fits brilliantly here as it connects to being; optimistic, flexible, persistent curious and knowing when to take a calculated risk.

This is precisely what Magda is doing. She has recently been furloughed for the next 3 weeks and this will be regularly reviewed. When I asked Magda how she felt about it, she said that she was happy because financially she isn’t losing out. Her work wasn’t coming through at the pace that it previously did and it can be de-motivating when you are not 100% utilised. Magda has toyed with the idea of getting a sideline business project off the ground, Happy Nappy By Magda, where she makes cupcakes, cake designs and animals out of baby clothes and nappies - they are super cute.

Over the next 3 weeks, she is going to think about how she can market her work online and through social media. We spoke about whether there is a course that she can do that is marketing focused that can help her to put some of this into action. With the furlough being in 3-weekly chunks, the idea could be to look at each of these as set periods of time with a specific focus to work towards. We were laughing when we spoke as although we can’t be sure but one of the positive outcomes of being in lock down could be a baby boom!

Complexity - you are always going to make decisions based on a level of uncertainty, when can never be absolute with our career. There is a technique called the TOP principle that I’d recommend having a go at doing in relation to your career.

1. What is TOTALLY in your control?

2. What is OUT of your control?

3. What is PARTIALLY in your control?

Anything that is OUT of your control, you can’t do anything about at the moment so don’t fixate or worry about this right now. You can make progress on what is TOTALLY in your control so start here as this will build your confidence. PARTIALLY means that there are elements that you can work on, so concentrate on these first.

If you have been furloughed it would be great to hear what you have decided to do with your time. Many of you are volunteering or have decided to support activities that will benefit the front line - whatever you are doing, I’d love to hear from you.