Can you write on LinkedIn, the site to present your resume and look for a job, that you are on layoffs? The question concerns a share of people that the pandemic has enlarged in an unprecedented way. According to the latest annual surveys of INPS, in fact, there were almost three billion cash hours (ordinary, extraordinary, notwithstanding) authorized by the social security institution in 2020. In 2019 they were less than 260 million.
The growth of lockdowns due to the pandemic has therefore been over 10 times during the year, also thanks to the extension of the period of use of the social safety net, guaranteed by the various relative decrees. In the course of 2021 the use of layoffs was attenuated, but the hours authorized by INPS in the first 10 months of the year are 1.6 billion (here the time series with the detail, month by month): less than the year last but well above pre-pandemic levels.
Therefore, communicating the new status of cassintegrato for those who find themselves living in this situation is a matter that has its own relevance on LinkedIn, the social network most linked to the world of work, which highlights the professional positions of the members. Currently, user profiles do not provide for the possibility of having a “layoff” button, the company said. But this information can be entered in the “experience” section, where everyone can report that they are in this particular situation.
At the moment, the platform also offers the possibility – thanks to the “available for” button – to declare to recruiters, or other companies, their willingness to undertake a new career path. You can choose whether to show this status only to those who use “LinkedIn Recruiter”, a tool offered by the social network for the professional selection of personnel, or to all users in an undifferentiated way, and therefore potentially also to current employers. You can also get noticed by adding #OpenToWork in the profile photo.
“The Cassa Integrazione Guadagni (CIG) is a social safety net, used in constant employment, aimed at economically supporting the wages of workers of companies that find themselves in certain difficult situations, in the face of which they require a reduction or suspension of the employment relationship », says the definition on Cliclavoro, the portal of the Ministry of Labor and Social Policies to facilitate the intermediation between supply and demand. The cassintegrati, if at zero hours, are therefore in theory suspended employees, inactive; it may happen that they are made to work anyway, but it is a fraud against the State.
To return to the LinkedIn metrics, it would therefore not be correct to indicate the termination of the employment relationship in the mandatory fields to be filled in when you want to list your experiences. Even adding the information on the redundancy fund in the “description” part of the job, the social network does not take it into account when it sends its emails or notifications to contacts. So it may happen that in the midst of a period of layoffs, which can be difficult and worrying, a user receives the usual congratulations from their virtual acquaintances, on the occasion of a working anniversary. To avoid these inconveniences, it is necessary to define the privacy settings well (here it is explained how).
Beyond the technicalities linked to a social network used to find work, and which therefore concerns a more crucial and delicate activity than sharing holiday photos, the question remains: to entrust or not to such a stage, and therefore to an audience potentially very extensive, the news of the status of layoffs? And above all: will it affect potential employers and employment opportunities or not?
There are basically two schools of thought among those involved in human resources. On the one hand, there are those who always and in any case prefer transparency as a value, even in the most extreme sense widespread on social networks, where it is not uncommon to end up exposing themselves even more than one would like. On the other hand, there are those who confirm the negative perception that hovers over the cassintegrati. In the real world, when head hunters and “human resources” directors see that a company has laid off some employees while others have remained at work, they wonder: why them? There will be a reason, they often deduce, and they draw consequences.
«I personally believe in a total transparency of professional relationships and I think it is always advisable to put the situation on the plate and explain it, also because in such an event it is interesting to evaluate what the candidate is doing. But maybe that's not the right thing to do. Maybe it is more appropriate to keep a different attitude according to the companies “, is the reflection of Alessandro Rimassa, founder of Radical HR Club, an online platform in the human resources sector.
“I would mention this status only in the interview and only if requested. There is no need to justify why you are looking for another job “says David Buonaventura, founder of Colloquio Diretto, an information site for job seekers.
Roberta Zantedeschi, consultant on communication and human resources for companies, recalls that “being on layoffs does not indicate a professional or personal insufficiency, but rather declares a difficulty or a managerial and strategic choice of the company for which that person works”. According to Zantedeschi, “whoever tells himself has a certain margin of action in guiding, at least in part, the perception of others”. Presenting oneself as a “second-class” worker, however, has negative consequences on self-communication, and it would be preferable to focus on one's skills, without diminishing them just because at that precise moment she is not working, continues Zantedeschi.
Although aware that it is not an easy or obvious attitude to maintain, for Zantedeschi “negotiating power must be based on the value that a person can bring, not on his need to work”, also with a view to “transforming some distortions of the labor market and the supply-demand ratio “.
Then there is the question, not secondary, of the contribution relief that by law a company that hires a redundancy fund can obtain. “I would also like to inform you that being in the Extraordinary Wages Redundancy Fund / on the move / in the age of apprenticeship …, my eventual recruitment would involve facilitations for your company”, suggests the vademecum to write the letter of response to an advertisement of the centers for employment of Ravenna (Regional Employment Agency of Emilia Romagna). In this case it is not a question of social settings, but of a private communication, as private is the interview. The choice to write “layoffs” next to one's name on LinkedIn is instead a multiplied communication without the right of reply, with effects that can be different and on the choice of which many people are reflecting.
