5 Ways the Coronavirus Pandemic Has Changed the Way People Work
We’re living in unprecedented times. In a few short months, the world has been altered forever, and every person on the planet is being forced to adapt. Now, the economy is facing a rough ride and businesses must adjust their operation strategy or become another casualty of the pandemic.
Are you going to let this pandemic sink your business? Or will your organization choose to adapt, and keep afloat through these challenging economic times?
The purpose of this article is to observe the five ways that people and organizations are changing their working tactics to weather the recession and survive. With each point, we suggest a tactic to help your business or organization meet the challenge.
More Remote Work (Even After the Pandemic)
Gartner, Inc. conducted a survey in March 2020 and found that 88% of businesses have either encouraged or required employees to work from home. They also found that 97% of organizations have canceled work-related travel.
This will undoubtedly rock many organizations to their core. It’s a challenge to change your entire business operation within such a rapid timeframe. This isn’t a time for worry – in fact, it’s an opportunity to revamp your business operation in an efficient manner. If your organization hasn’t done so already, consider migrating to a cloud workspace.
Cloud servers offer easy collaboration for remote workers. Plus, adopting a cloud workspace is easy and has a short training time frame. Your formerly office-based staff can access cloud desktops and run an entire company virtually. Creating customer orders, completing administrative tasks, and updating employee files are just a few of the tasks you can do. Virtually any office task can be achieved remotely, and workers can access the cloud from anywhere with consistent backups, essentially avoiding any risk of physical disasters destroying your data.
Cloud workspaces also offer scalability and you only pay for the storage you need. There’s no longer a need for hardware in your office space, which can get outdated quickly. Cloud technology enables you to scale services solely to what your company needs now.
There’s a strong chance that many companies will embrace the remote cloud workspace and keep most workers remote. This will save serious money on overhead such as office space and computer hardware.
New Communication Methods
Effective leadership and a clear timeline will enable your company to make these changes in a measured manner. Your leadership should provide a clear ‘plan of action’ for employees to have full disclosure and comfort with your COVID-19 proof strategy. We recommend only referencing information from verified sources such as the World Health Organization and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
It’s important to establish team guidelines to ensure that there are ground rules for your new remote working strategy. Record numbers of employers are introducing intentional ‘peer-to-peer’ interactions such as regular virtual check-ins with managers, and virtual ‘all hands on deck’ meetings on platforms such as Zoom, GoToMeeting or Microsoft Teams. Having ‘core team time’ helps employees stay in the loop and helps stave off feelings of isolation.
One key tool is utilizing online scheduling – an exceptionally useful tool for scheduling and resource management. We use TrinityCalendar to easily expand our calendar and scheduling needs while connecting with other Quickbase applications. When all our applications are connected, it makes our organization flow become fast, smooth, and at peak efficiency.
Another benefit of using Quickbase applications is the sheer effectiveness. Using features such as digital signatures, you can capture a digital signature and use it on all your forms and outputs. These have a user and time stamp to ensure authenticity while making it easy for HR or other members of your workforce to approve, sign, and authorize documents or reports.
Whichever communication platform you choose, ensure that it can integrate with a wide variety of apps and has project management features to manage, track, and administer workflows. Only work with flexible tools as your business grows and changes.
More Tech, Less Travel
Pre COVID-19 crisis, it was considered normal to have millions of people traveling for business every day. But this pandemic is forcing organizations to reconsider the impact of travel in many ways. Yes, there are environmental drawbacks, and there are also serious health considerations as we’re forced to accept that air travel has quickly spread a disease that has negatively impacted human health and the global economy.
Many businesses are realizing that there are far more cost-effective ways of communication. Instead of footing the travel costs (flight, hotel, food, and so on) of employees, why not just invest in the cloud and host video conferencing? Virtual technology is seeing a massive uptick during the Coronavirus crisis. Once this is over, we will see a lasting progression of cloud use, virtual technology, and videoconferencing.
This adaption of technology is a good thing. Offices will never fully disappear. Humans are social creatures and there are benefits of having a team in one place for certain business functions. The corporate world is realizing that sending employees across the world is unsustainable in many ways. Post-pandemic, we will see a drop in global business travel as corporations save travel for only the most essential purposes.
Everything is Going Online
We’ve heard about the retail apocalypse for some time now. Now, it’s being accentuated by a pandemic that is literally closing shops and forcing restaurants and retail businesses to either embrace online shopping or fail. This pandemic is leading to a rapid increase in online, pickup, and delivery options for shopping and food sales. Again, this trend will outlast the pandemic and businesses in these spaces should prepare their business model for long-term growth in online sales and strategy.
This increase in home entertainment will continue to affect the cinema industry as the film industry is already adapting by releasing entertainment directly online to streaming platforms. Online businesses are growing and it’s safe to say that every industry will need to adapt to increased consumer online spending habits. Amazon is hiring over 100,000 just to help manage the rush of online spending. This growth might slow down, but it will not stop.
Other industries are adapting with online learning quickly becoming the norm and sales happening virtually. Industries such as solar and real estate are embracing virtual contract signing and closing to ensure that social distancing is upheld. Now that they are the norm, many industries will embrace these tactics out of convenience and efficiency.
A New World on the Horizon
Despite this long-term increase in the online business world, organizations that do business in the physical ‘real-world’ will eventually bounce back.
People are social and like going to sporting events, restaurants, concerts, and more. Just like the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, people will eventually forget about the Coronavirus crisis. As hard as that may be to believe at this point, it’s true.
Many businesses will die and in time, many new firms will replace them. Think of this crisis as an opportunity to revamp efficiency, cut excess operational ‘fat’, and thrive in the face of adversity. Since the beginning of the pandemic, our clients have reached out to Trinity requesting ways to remotely track employee assets, expense management, time tracking, PTO as well as apps to improve overall business processes.
Trinity has wide experience in these spaces, and we can help your organization roll out solutions quickly. We’re a Quickbase Solution Provider, and we specialize in application development. We utilize the Quickbase platform to create the perfect web or mobile-based business technology solution for your organization.
If you can define it, we can build it! We train your team to make implementing new systems smooth, seamless, and easy. Let’s use this crisis as an opportunity to optimize your operations.