Working in a Post COVID world
By: Nkechi Oguchi
Tags: Business, Change, Work, Startup, Success

History would be bookmarked in the year 2020, as it would divide time into “Pre-COVID” and “Post COVID”. People would tell stories of how life was like before and after the pandemic. It’s just like having a “Pre” and “Post” iPhone era but bigger.

If you’ve still not come to the understanding of the reality of our changed world, consider this article your wake up call.

Life as we know it is forever changed. The extent of this change is yet to be determined.

Most of it would only be appreciated in hindsight. However, being a business strategist, a great deal of my work requires that I make forecast and predication and take decisions based on that. To increase my accuracy in doing this I have to continually learn and gather information. With all I have learned and observed I have come to draw a picture of what I believe working would look like “Post COVID”. This picture is not of the nearest future, but more mid term. Here are my predictions:

Remote working would move from a trend to a way of life. It would no longer be that thing that millennials and Gen Zs talk about. It would be normal. In fact, most corporation that do not need to manufacture or need stores would shed their traditional head offices and disperse their teams around the globe. This allows them adopt more diversity in their teams, stay closer to their customers and collect data. It also incorporates more flexibility in their work. I predict that most organisations would opt for co-working subscriptions for their teams to work out and stay productive. More companies would emerge to support remote working. This is an easy one. Smart companies are created from demand. With more companies going remote and leveraging remote teams they would need tools to manage productivity, communication and collaboration. So, more companies would spring up to serve this demand. You would be paid for performance and not just attendance: All those days of eye service and looking busy for your boss is over. There’s no one really watching you. Most of what your boss would look at is how you are able to deliver and perform. So, if you are super and are able to do amazing work and complete your task in 2 hours versus the 10 hours it takes your colleague, then congratulations, you’re a rockstar. More people would have more than one job. Working remotely and having virtual companies would allow a person be able to work for more than one company at a time. Not necessarily as a consultant, but a person could be the COO of two organisations. Post COVID would provide the flexibility to do so. People would feel both isolated and connected at the same time. Such an irony. Technology allows anyone to reach out and engage with anyone else. It makes everyone seem so close. But with more people living and working in silos and choosing to engage predominately online, we’ll end up feeling isolated and needing human contact. This need would only grow stronger. Virtual events are here to stay. Right now people are attending virtual hangouts, parties and conferences. There are no physical concerts or events currently happening because of massive lock downs. This would not change after the pandemic. Even when people are allowed to physically engage, most event planners and organisers would have both live and virtual forms of their events. This would not just be through Instagram live. But tools that would bring virtual parties, concerts and conferences to live would be made more sophisticated and adopted. The airline industry would never be the same. I have had to travel for meetings and conferences in the past. But now I do all that virtually. More people would question the relevance of physical meetings and physical attendance and opt to meet virtually instead. If this leads to substantial cost savings for some organisations they would be more than willing to embrace it. This would mean a decrease in demand for business travels. More businesses would secure their model by discovering ways to serve their clients virtually. Right now if you cannot deliver value to your clients virtually, your business is probably being hit very badly by the pandemic. This would cause business leaders to review their model and create virtual forms of their services. And for products, ways would be discovered to eliminate the need for the client to be physically present to patronise. Schools would have to shift to e-learning, physical shops would have to move to e-shops and e-commerce. The rise of the robots is here. We’ve been asked to avoid physical contact. This would get ramped up in the future. You would be served b y robots. You packages would be delivered by robots. More sophisticated machines would be built to deliver this.

These are just my predictions on how I believe people would work. There is so much uncertainty. But one thing is sure, companies that remain flexible and adaptable to change are the ones more likely to succeed. So what about you? What are your predictions for a “post COVID” world?

Thank you for reading :)