Press Release
14th April 2020
Techcelerate, its Companies and Partners join together to
launch Furloughed Life in response to UK Government’s
furlough scheme
Alternative title: Go Find Yourself
Techcelerate, its companies and partners join together to launch
Furloughed Life
aimed at
furloughed employees and UK tech startups to stimulate economic activity.
The UK Government introduced the job retention scheme widely known as “furlough” as a
way to reduce, as well as delay, the impending mass redundancies due to the Covid-19
pandemic.
The scheme, as of now, runs for up to 3 months with the expected end date being in June
2020. Any employee can be furloughed from 3 weeks to 3 months and with the lockdown in
place and the furloughed not allowed to work for their employers, the options for productive
economic activity is very limited. At the same time, an equally important issue is the
consideration of the mental health and wellbeing of furloughed staff.
What if voluntary opportunities could be found for the furloughed, which would lead to
stabilising potential mental health issues whilst increasing their chances of job opportunities
in the future? At the same time, could these volunteer opportunities be used to increase the
chances of survival of UK tech startups? The survival of as many companies as possible is
after all one of the key focuses of the UK Government at this time.
Furloughed Life
was founded to bring volunteers (the furloughed staff) and the tech
startups together.
The project is spearheaded by
Manoj Ranaweera
of Techcelerate in coordination with
Chris
McCarthy
of Focus 5 Recruitment and
Ram Raghavan
of Talent36T (t/a AiRA)
We firmly believe in this cause and to demonstrate our commitment to this, we will be
donating 100% of any profits generated during the first six months to support our health
warriors in the NHS.
Manoj Ranaweera
of Techcelerate said,
“As soon as the pandemic started, we had to change our focus for 2020 from bui