Someday, sometime, maybe soon, when vaccination becomes a pop culture, the world may want to reverse to what is now called the new normal. But in its wake, a phenomenon as massive as a global pandemic will leave many things different, including how we work.
High skilled workers whose jobs are computer-based will likely see (already see) the most changes, from physical locations to technology changes and upgrade to the ways productivity is determined. The changes we experience are really going to affect our personal lives to new inventions and the society as a whole.
The changes also highlight a chance to remake how we define work and learn from the mistakes of the past. We listed these changes that may stay after the pandemic:
Read also: The question persists: Are Nigerians ready for the future of work?
Contents
Work from home is a permanent phenomenon
If there is going to be a time when work from the office is going to be enforced again, it is not going to be after this pandemic – knowing that many people will continue to work from home. This is because working from home has worked in tremendous ways for both employees and their bosses.
Productivity has hardly been an issue and many of the things we thought won’t work – homeschooling and working – are going to become constant realities.
Working from home allows people to skip their commute – talk about the traffic in places like Lagos – and can give them more flexibility in the hours they work. That is surely deal employees are willing to put their signature on.
The office will be to some other use
The office will still play an important role in people’s work – thought differently. The office will now be a tool in our toolkit to get it done differently. Time in the office will be geared toward collaborative work that’s more challenging at home.
When that becomes normal, we will think of our offices only as shared spaces.
We will pay more attention now to AI, automation, and freelancing
Cliché, but what does not kill you makes you stronger, and that’s when you clean the blood from the fight and move on. A lot of workers lost their jobs in 2020 because companies had to prune their gardens, but it made the freelancing industry bigger.
Also, now we understand that with more automation and artificial intelligence, more barriers to getting work done will become history. So, we are looking at quicker, more intelligent, and possibly even more creative work.
Productivity will be redefined
We used to measure productivity using the time workers spent in front of their laptop acting busy, the time they resumed work, the time they left and their countenance interacting with other co-workers. All that will change.
Productivity metrics will be more qualitative. We will look at productivity using results rather than quantity. That metric will excite workers because attention will now be paid to quality rather than time spent on a task or project.
‘Company culture’ may phase out
We were just beginning to intensify on the concept of company culture before the pandemic came to disrupt our lives. And, because work from home will become a culture, it will be much harder to talk about company culture – after all, workers won’t be working from the same room.
We will observe that workers now limit communication to co-workers they directly work with. So, even if the pandemic goes, that trend may continue. Without interactions with a wide range of people at the company, company culture suffers since people aren’t exposed to the same set of behaviours and values.
