While the pandemic may have opened up the long awaited work from home option, as workers move to more rural areas, many employers are considering pay adjustments for the location change. While it’s helpful to have increases based on location, we surveyed our social followers this past fall, and 68% said they would take a pay cut in order to keep their job and live in their location of choice. Challenging times and shifting norms have a way of helping us determine our personal priorities in life, but locality pay is a component for many salaries – especially federal employees. It’s true that the salary is paid based on the talent and the job; however, location costs are factored in when it’s important to attract talent in a specific area of the country. The shifts may not be felt for current employees, but rather, we might begin to see adjustments made for future hiring needs.
Layoffs Impacting the Defense Industry
| IBM | Shifting strategies at IBM have lead to cuts in Europe in the thousands. With CEO Arvind Krishna’s commitment to moving to fulfill their cloud vision after their 2018 Red Hat purchase, IBM signals to employees the need to adapt to the new required skill sets or move on.
IBM stated, “Our staffing decisions are made to provide the best support to our customers in adopting an open hybrid cloud platform and AI capabilities. We also continue to make significant investments in training and skills development for IBMers to best meet the needs of our customers.” “IBM is in the biggest transformation of the company’s history as it moves from services to software and specialized hardware with Quantum. That requires a different mix of skills in its employee base and the repercussions of that manifest itself in the layoffs that IBM has been doing, mostly quietly, for the last 5+ years,” Holger Mueller, an analyst at Constellation Research said. |
|---|
As COVID-19 cases continue to spike, the military has responded with travel restrictions for the majority of its bases around the world. Earlier restrictions were in place in the spring and summer; however, with numbers on the rise again and the vaccine slowly rolling out, the Pentagon has responded with military installation travel restrictions.
Hiring impacting the Defense Industry
| Raytheon Technologies | With multiple lines of businesses, aerospace and defense company, Raytheon, has openings to fill in many locations. While Raytheon has over a thousand open cleared positions that are around the country and abroad, their needs in Arizona are in the hundreds. Specifically, the organization is looking for multiple Principal Embedded Software Engineers in Tucson, AZ.
Raytheon provides advanced systems and services for commercial, military and government customers worldwide. Employees have the opportunity to work in quantum physics, electric propulsion, directed energy, hypersonics, avionics and cybersecurity. |
|---|
Opportunity to Watch
If ever there was a need for human resource professionals, this is the time. As organizations face employee duress from isolated seasons, as well as shifting budgets, changing operational needs, and delivering on diversity promises, the need is great for HR professionals who can bring about workplace change. While remote work is in demand, it’s not always a good fit for everyone. Add the stressors of finances and concern over layoffs in the news, and it becomes a balancing act to support employees within the organization. Of course, while layoffs are on the forefront of minds, it’s important to take the time to ensure that downsizing methodology is planned, managed, and implemented as fairly and openly as possible. It’s true that where there is great need, there’s also great opportunity. So, while we may call 2020 a dumpster fire of a year, a number of opportunities have risen to the top. It seems that 2021 is the year to rise to meet those challenges.
