Once humankind gets over the current virus scare and countries lift the lockdown, people will start going about their daily routines. Many will go back to their old jobs while many freshers or people who got laid off will have to start looking for new opportunities.
Considering that the virus scare has forced the global population to be confined to their homes for over 3-4 months, or probably longer, people should utilize the time to learn new skills and strengthen their resumes while also allowing them to be flexible to take up newer roles. This prolonged quarantined period has opened up new areas and opportunities for firms to operate in which were not considered earlier as it would have disrupted a balanced working style followed until now.
Considering almost all the companies have had a dry run with employees working from home, process managers may consider replacing in-person jobs with roles that can be remotely taken care of. This not only helps firms cut additional costs but also allows them to employ more freelancers and part-time workers to work from their homes. Such roles would allow companies to work beyond the cliche 9 to 5 plan, allowing them to use their time wisely, probably taking multiple projects from different clients at the same time.
Employers will shift their employee evaluation strategies from input-based to output-based, making growth a bigger competition among the workforce. This can result in employees shifting their mindsets from a predefined working style towards a more adaptive, customized, and even collaborative working style to achieve common goals. It would open opportunities for even new joiners to showcase their leadership qualities, creating their own ladder of growth within companies.
Though current cloud technologies already possess the power to assist with remote working, services like multimedia telecommunication and data sharing will evolve, allowing smoother collaboration among teams across the globe. The virus scare may have cut short any chances of corporate overseas travel, allowing firms to consider hiring full-time overseas teams working remotely rather than outsourcing their workload to a single overseas entity.
For the above theory to be successfully accepted by the next generation, it’s not only employers or job seekers who need to shift their mindset but also our institution that needs to adapt to prepare the future generation. We have already seen tremendous growth in distance learning where companies are providing online degrees from global institutes at affordable prices. Many top institutes have taken up adaptive teaching over just simply knowledge sharing to prepare future graduates.
Although this is one possibility, nothing is really set in stone. No one can quite confidently predict what the future has in store for us. It all depends on how humans have been affected, in this case particularly the corporate executive teams and how they choose to handle the transition back to normalcy. Would they be inclined to implementing a few pilot phases to gauge benefits or make haste decisions when we’re on the cusp of stability, although slowly, being restored? But one thing’s for certain - Things will never be the same again!