Employees, self-employed how they reinvented their job to face the crisis

By fashionlifeshopping 29/08/2022 1240 Views

This article is from Management magazine

When she thinks back to last year, Marion, owner of a clothing store in the Parisian suburbs, laughs: "To say that before the first confinement, I did not see the point of a store on line !" Caught up by the closure of “non-essential” businesses last March, the entrepreneur stayed at home for two weeks, “brooding over the 30,000 euros of goods that I had just brought in”. And then, the quadra took advantage of her “very free” time to post photos of her new collection on Instagram, before offering her loyal customers deliveries by La Poste. For the second confinement, it was run in and its brand new merchant site was running at full speed. “Since then, I have spent less time in the store and more time listing my clothes… But, thanks to social networks, I have won customers in the provinces!”

Self-employed or salaried, there are many who, like Marion, had to reinvent their job for a long time during the Covid crisis. In fact, 58% of employees no longer see their work in the same way and 74% believe that there will be a before and after the pandemic in the organization of their company, according to an Ifop survey, Siaci Saint Honoré, Wittyfit carried out in June 2020. Magali Rossello, director of an HR strategy consulting firm, confirms this: “The crisis has accelerated the need to change one's relationship to work. I support bosses who have taken up their duties in full confinement. For them, vertical management of a team they have barely met is impossible.” And to add: “In general, the control without added value has diminished. With telework and generalized partial unemployment, the multiple levels of hierarchy have sometimes proved unnecessary, while the production of each has become clearly visible.

Putting almost the entire population under a bubble during the first confinement functioned for many as a time of research, forced of course, but sometimes life-saving. Magali Rossello thus estimates that, among the female executives she supports, a third have decided to leave their positions and another third are seriously considering it. For the most part, the women had to babysit while doing their jobs and found they wanted either more flexibility or to be more directly responsible for what they were doing. Men are not left out: “Among my clients, three top managers chose to leave their posts in the first half of 2020, at the height of the uncertainty, testifies Magali Rossello. They no longer wanted to be pawns in a greater whole…”

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Employees, freelancers how they reinvented their job to face the crisis

Manuel, a 30-something computer engineer, could have waited for the crisis to pass, snug in the box where he cut his teeth. But here it is: “Since we had been bought by bigger than us, I did not recognize myself either in the processes or in the speech of my superiors. I preferred to leave and I did well: I found a more creative job, a little less well paid in a smaller box, but I feel like I have taken my life back in hand…” a choice that hardly surprises Adrien Chignard, work and organizational psychologist and founder of Sens&Cohérence. “The best way to fight against post-covid anguish is to transform reality, in other words action”, he explains, before quoting the philosopher Alain: “The secret of action is to s 'put it there'. According to him, the employees or managers who have been able to meet the challenges launched by the Covid are those who have developed positive psychological capital. That is to say those who have for them self-confidence (they do not doubt their ability to succeed), optimism (they know how to attribute their successes to themselves), hope (they are able to persevere and to modify their trajectory if necessary) and finally resilience (they know how to bounce back in the face of adversity).

Luckily, all these parameters can be acquired or developed. Self-confidence, for example, is gained by concentrating our efforts towards a goal that pleases us through small daily victories. If you don't like to speak in public, you can start by speaking in small groups, then prepare a presentation with a partner before starting... To gain optimism, "we don't hesitate to ask for feed -back, advises Adrien Chignard. Hearing others tell you what you have achieved makes it easier to make the link between your performance and your action.” Developing hope is about doing like Manuel and questioning your professional goal. Just as at 5 years old, we can want to be a police officer without it committing us for life, nothing forces us to dream of the same job throughout our existence! It's all about realizing it. Finally, to strengthen our resilience, continues Adrien Chignard, “we do not prevent ourselves from looking around us for signs that can give us the feeling of better understanding the world. Too bad if they are mental constructions: they also reveal a need. For example ? Interpreting the bankruptcy of your business as a sign that it's time to move from accounting to permaculture, since we've been talking about it...

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You can also change your job without changing it… in the same way that you can redecorate your apartment without moving. In fact, for specialized psychologists, job satisfaction is akin to a transaction between oneself, the content of one's job and the environment in which one performs it. We can therefore modify some of these data, reinvent our job, for example, to find satisfaction in exercising it. This is what Marc, a communications consultant, did: “I have been working in communications for twenty years and, as a result, I have piled up responsibilities. My work was reduced to making schedules to organize the work of others… I spoke to my superiors about it, who understood my frustration very well. Next month I have to get a “real” mission from a client. Phew!”

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Rather than the content of their job, others are tempted to change the environment in which they exercise it: according to the SeLoger website, nearly a quarter of Ile-de-France residents say they are ready to leave their region to join Brittany or the Pays de la Loire... If this movement were to become widespread, it would mark a real break: since the industrial revolution, we have been working and living side by side in urban areas... Finally, we can also evolve in a more personal. Adrien Chignard cites the example of one of his clients, a bank manager who, since having twins, has put his family back at the center of his priorities and pushed his work to the periphery. The essential ? Have the courage of lucidity to embark on the path of change.

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