The COVID Impact

Working From Home

As a "working for home" worker for the very large majority of my career, I have questioned why this is not more widespread.  Well in 2020 this become the norm.  Employees and employers had to learn different ways to be productive and to communicate.  Video conference technology fought it out and people were having Zoom meetings - or teams, or whatever platform was provided by the organisation.

This change has seen a slight power shift as some adapted more easily and the privileges or office  (both physical and hierarchy) become less noticeable and less important - deferring to getting things done.

Geographically static office space, with a "fancy" addresses suddenly become a burden.  In fact this opened up a whole new labour market to an organisation.  Rather then picking talent from within a geographical area, organisation could pick from the global as everyone was just a click away.

The breakdown of 9-to-5 was necessary as "school-runs" and "supermarket queues" had a certain priority.  Once again smart organisation could take advantage of this and extend the day to cover more time-zones and add flexibility.

Backend Operations and Systems

As employees and customer increasingly moved online an organisations backend operations and IT systems where tested, stretched, and often broke.  How many times have you heard, "due to COVID" as an excuse for a delay (a long delay), a reduction in service quality, reduced availability of product, etc.  At first this was, in my opinion, acceptable, but as we are one year on this should no longer be an acceptable excuse.  It tell the customer that an organisation has not been adaptable enough, has not prepared itself for the digital world they operate within - that has been developing for the last two decades - that it's operations and IT systems are not capable enough.

Organisations now have, and again in my opinion will continue to have, a need to; be more adaptable to the world the operate within, move large amounts of data around their workforce and systems, be more nibble with change, and be for connected with digital channels of all types for customers and the workforce.

Digital Channels

The customer put a higher level of demand on digital channels as other traditional channels "closed-down".

The workforce put a higher level of demand on digital collaboration tools and communication channels as chatting at the water-cooler become a WhatsApp, Teams, or other chat.

Higher expectations to "do things digitally" have started to develop and it's not just about having a website or app.  An example might be with the new emerging digital banks v traditional banks.  Opening a new account with a new bank can be achieved online.  Uploading scans (or photos) of documents for AI to read and check, for external data sources to valid them against, mean the requirement traditional banks have for you to visit a branch (or send in) original is putting them at a very significant disadvantage at the moment.

In my opinion, while there will be some "roll-back" to the "old" ways, more people are accepting the new digital channels and preferring the access and availability.