While the far reaching social, economic, and political implications of the COVID-19 pandemic are, at best, uncertain and speculative, some effects are already beginning to show.
In consumer trends, the adoption rates of services like food & autonomous delivery, online communication, etc. have recently gotten a massive boost in acceleration. While there’s certainly an unsustainable spike in their usage during the pandemic, more apps on more devices, and more awareness of these options is the concrete result.
But what does all this separation mean for people and for job culture as a whole?
The (likely) lasting effects on work culture are already materializing, as companies around the world are forced to run the experimental temporary adoption of full time remote work.
Some percentage of those companies will almost certainly see the benefits (or at least the lack of drawbacks) to a partially remote workforce, speeding up the already increasing acceptance of remote work. This may result in a more geographically diffuse workforce, perhaps sooner than was expected.
For companies whose business models can support and even benefit from more full time remote work, this may prove advantageous.
It could increase employee satisfaction, reduce facilities strain, and offer other advantages without affecting the profitability of many companies. It might even save some money long term since housing humans for 8–10 hours a day isn’t cheap.
For employees, however, the future may not look quite so bright. The short term effects may seem primarily positive — more time at home with family, less commuting, fewer distractions — but there are also downsides. Fewer informal meetings may mean more formal meetings, already an issue in many workplaces. Teams may also suffer from a lack of time together to share, bond, or even vent.
In the long run, employees may also have a much harder time standing out to those above them.
To advance in most organizations, you not only need to get results, but to make an impression on those above you. Impressions are not only made through the results of hard work, but also on other character traits that may not be as easily displayed or assessed in a virtual environment.
A good manager may offer you the chance to get face time with senior leadership fairly regularly in an office setting, but there’s no easy virtual way of doing the same.
The risk of becoming more of a “cog in the wheel” will only increase without efforts to mitigate it. And the lack of coworker examples and on-the-spot positive/negative feedback may erode people’s understanding of how their performance is stacking up, increasing psychological strain.
The news may not be all bad though, An advantage of this may be that hiring becomes more standardized as a process, resulting in less “schmoozing” being required. But, by the same token, competence and leadership are more complex than just bullet points on a resume which is why job interviews to assess “fit” exist. You can’t take the human out of Human Resources without losing something critical, and this may not work out in favor of the worker or the company.
Speaking of the company, the outlook for organizations is not all sunshine and roses either. The “drop-in” culture, that allows leaders to remain clued in to issues in their departments, may prove difficult when issues are relayed via a literal telephone game. What the military refers to as “unit cohesion” may suffer as a result.
It is, of course, possible that there will be an immediate “snap back” effect after the virus that sees a lowered desire by people to work from home, and a lowered willingness of companies to allow it. But the fact that these technology driven trends began well before the virus, points to their eventual continuation.
New strategies for maintaining healthy and productive work environments will definitely be needed. Both companies and their employees would be well advised to take these somewhat less tangible issues into serious consideration in the months and years to come.
