The ongoing global pandemic has ravaged the way people work and do business. Previous public gatherings, meetings, office parties and social celebrations have all but been binned indefinitely owing to the disruptions caused by COVID-19. As businesses and workers scramble to adjust to the 'new normal,' we will explore what the future entails for work in the current environment as well as what is to come in the days ahead.
The previous 'normal' involved a great deal of social interaction and community. Business owners, managers and employees would make it a habit to spend as much time physically in their office rooms, desks and cubicles to show others their loyalty and dedication to their work. 'Working hard' meant putting in extra effort and time to the office in order to excel and climb the corporate ladder or scale the business to new heights.
After the widespread dispersion of the novel COVID-19 in January 2020, slowly but surely, businesses and society in general began feeling the adverse effects of the virus to not just their operations but how they go about their daily lives. Restrictions on when to leave homes, where you are allowed to go and what you are supposed to wear all became too much of a nightmarish reality for much of the global population which suddenly saw themselves locked under house arrest to try to contain the spread of the virus.
This resulted in a massive paradigm shift in the WoW (way of working) for most businesses and their employees. Now, stuck in their homes, people were forced to connect online and start working remotely using their laptops, mobiles and other devices to make sure they stayed up-to-date with the latest news and developments affecting their companies. Previously uncommon concepts like "work from home" and "remote working" suddenly became the rage and the expected standard for businesses large and small.
Years before COVID transformed the way we operate, a few daring technologists foresaw the potential of remote working and how it can be best harnessed in order to ensure smooth operations and efficiency for companies. Tech entrepreneurs like Alex Konanykhin and Silvina Moschini created one of the first internet-enabled advertising companies in 1997 under the KMGi Group name. In 2011, they launched their visionary software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform TransparentBusiness (1).
TransparentBusiness was launched as a cloud-based SaaS solution enabling employers to monitor the activities of their employees or contracts via use of an internet-based application which virtually tracks users' activity through screenshots, messages and recordings. The platform was one of the first to advocate mass remote work and true to its prediction, the world is becoming increasingly more adjusted to work remotely.
In a recent report by Global Workplace Analytics (2), it was determined that 43% of the workforce worked from home at least some of the time according to a survey done by Gallup in 2016. Additionally, surveys taken before the pandemic showed that as much as 80% of respondents would want to work from home at least some of the time - with more than a third willing to take a pay cut to enjoy that privilege.
Today, that privilege has turned into an indefinite reality for the majority of office goers who have been forced to adapt to the new normal and everything it embodies. Now months into mass home confinement, employees are now being assessed based on a different set of metrics than before - from hours logged in, to responsiveness of replies, to time of task completion and even how long they are in front of their laptop screens and webcams. For many companies and workers, the previous concept of '9 to 5' is no longer relevant.
Even after the proverbial dust settles, the way of working post-COVID will witness a greater dependence on remote working practices and technologies. In a May report from Business Insider (3), 54% of a survey sample of 25,000 IBM employees found that they would prefer to work from home continually even after the end of the pandemic. The principal reasons behind such a shift in preferences include considerations like increased happiness and wellbeing compared to office-going workers, greater flexibility to carry out work and in helping to cut costs on both transportation and housing - for both employees and employers alike).
To manage this transformation in metrics and remote work management, companies like TransparentBusiness and to a lesser extent other software companies focusing on specific subsets of remote working are taking the opportunity to expand their customer bases and enable more companies and people to work remotely in a more structured and systematic way - all efforts to adjust to the new and modern way of working.
References:
(1) - TransparentBusiness
(2) - Work-at-Home after COVID-19 forecast
(3) - 54% of adults want to work remotely most of the time after the pandemic
Note: The original post was published in LinkedIn Pulse and can be found at the below link:
Cheers,
Red
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