The future of work post Covid-19

The future of work post Covid-19

Constantly changing work trends as a result of the worldwide pandemic.

The normal workplace setting has undergone various changes for the past two years spent amidst the global pandemic. Adhering to the remote working approach was mandatory to almost all the industries across the world. This is how Work From Home started to be one of the widely discussed topics in conversation relating to workplace settings.

Embracing the era of “work from anywhere”

Along with the worldwide vaccine rollouts, organizations started to embrace the new normal of Work From Home to Work From Anywhere. This new trend enables employees to continue their day-to-day work from any suitable geographic location. The post-pandemic technology and work culture changes were the main supporting causes of the new work from anywhere setting. However, the capability of working remotely will be only applicable to a workforce community that is well skilled and educated. Whereas, certain industries that require physical proximity do not have the option to continue their work remotely. The new trend of work from anywhere comes with a bunch of satisfactory benefits that include: cost reductions in office space rent and maintenance, resourcing capability without the hindrance of geographic restrictions, and an intense increase in workforce productivity.

Nevertheless, work from anywhere is not always rainbows, butterflies, and unicorns; where it has its own challenges as well. Remote workers state that communication issues are one of the common challenges faced among remote working communities. Likewise, social isolation and data security are a couple of other noticeable challenges of remote working. The hybrid office model is known to be a solution for a few challenges faced in remote working. In this setting, employees meet a few times a week at a shared office to collaborate on their work connecting with other co-workers.

Pandemic-driven digital transformation

We all are aware that Covid-19 has led the largest instance of digital transformation by driving organizations and governments to digitalize. Digitalization was a popular aspect among businesses worldwide where the pandemic created a sense of urgency in adhering. By the existential threat posed by Covid-19, businesses were forced to redefine their business models involving technology transformations. It was confirmed that digital transformation is a mandatory requirement to be fulfilled by businesses in order to withstand future storms. A few of the main reasons that acted as the root causes are consumption of various digital channels by consumers, the rapid changes in purchasing behaviors, and higher demand for online platforms such as e-commerce.

Likewise, all the industries including aviation, banking, and finance, hospitality, and healthcare, consumer goods and supermarkets, and mainly education are required to digitally transform rapidly to stay in the course of being viable. Along with the rapid changes that are undergoing in society, organizations must transform their thinking patterns and act accordingly to thrive in this situation. Business leaders should strategically embrace innovation to serve their customers creating value. If the organizations are unwilling to adapt and embrace new ways of working, it will eventually impact their existential crisis.

Collective priority of reskilling

The pandemic created a major acceleration in automating and digitizing a number of job roles making an impact on future employment opportunities. Similarly, as a result of the consumer demand for digital interactions, organizations had to enable providing digital experiences to their customers. In several cases, providing this digital experience to their customers needed a proper overhaul in the skilled workforce. However, it is clear that organizations must prioritize proactively attending to this need of reskilling their workforce by identifying where exactly reskilling needs to start. By identifying these areas that need mandatory pieces of training, organizations must invest time and effort to take all the available opportunities to reskill and upskill their workforce and make them ready for job roles that will be needed in the future. It is important to construct a highly personalized and user-friendly skill development ecosystem that will keep employees interested in learning. Several companies have started doing their part by testing various training procedures to put in place and start building up required skills. In the same way, all individuals as employees should invest their own time and effort in developing the mandatory skill sets that will be required to survive in the corporate world.

Changing course towards resilience

Worldwide reporting firms state that a large number of organizations are focusing on innovative redesign approaches for their business workflows. The key area that has gained most of the attention is to develop a responsive organizational design with increased agility ensuring resilience. This approach requires the design of particular roles and structures that formalizes processes with effective flexibility. When companies start adapting to an agile workforce environment, it automatically starts encouraging their employees to contribute outside of the normal job roles to make them learn new things.

Workforce transition and rapid redeployment

It is a well-known fact that the economic uncertainty created by the worldwide pandemic has resulted in the job security of employees. Many organizations started responding to this economic impact by layoffs and reductions in remuneration at first. However, workforce transition into different workgroups of different functions or rapid redeployment was a smart move followed by certain organizations to reduce and completely shut down layoffs due to the economic crisis. In fact, this approach of redeployment allows companies to retain their valuable human resources and stay competitive in the market. Rapid redeployment is known to be an ideal solution for both companies in their resource management making the company more agile-based and employees in terms of their career development.

Afterword

We are at a stage where organizations must understand the significance of changing their approach of work to suit the post-pandemic. Immediate attention is required in re-structuring the workflows with the use of modern technology to elevate human potential. Moreover, business leaders should focus on creating the ideal working environment equipped with mandatory tools, technology, and cultural adjustments for the employees to unleash their full potential and contribute to the maximum.

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