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Will – Work from Home be the New Normal

By | Ramesh Ranjan | Editor www.humanengineers.com

Currently we are dealing with a very serious Pandemic disease – COVID 19 or the Corona Virus. It has literally brought the world to a standstill as scientists, doctors and administrators are grappling with the situation on how to save lives and restore normalcy at the earliest. This has been one of the most significant shutdown in the history of mankind.

The situation has demanded that we self quarantine as it has been found that Social distancing is the only way to combat this deadly virus attach. This has perforce mandated that people stay at home.

It has also meant that in order to ensure Business Continuity, employees are required to work from home. Millions of employees now work from home and are holding the fort for their companies and its customers.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution – with its convergence of emerging technology developments in areas such as robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, the Internet of Things and virtual reality – will change the future of work for every organization in every industry during the 21st century,” says Peter Miscovich, Strategy & Innovation practice lead for JLL.

The emergence of these advanced technology platforms and dynamic new business and workforce models will require organizations to rethink their workplace and CRE [corporate real estate] portfolio strategies,” says Miscovich.

The co-evolution of online communities and smart workplaces, within the context of unprecedented connectivity, cloud computing, and immersive digital experiences creates a best-of-both-worlds scenario – the virtual office.

A virtual workforce was once difficult to manage. In the last few years,  tools like the following, has made managing a virtual workforce far more practical and much easier to manage.

Nos Purpose Tools
1 Chat/Team Communication/Collaboration Hub Slack, Chanty, Flock, Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts Chat
2 Video Conferencing /  Meetings & Presentations Zoom, Google Hangout, Skype. GoToMeeting, join.me, Aircall
3 Project Management/Task Management Jira, AirTable, Asana, Pivotal Tracker, Trello, Wrike, Monday, Kanban
4 Calendar Management Google Calendar , I Done This, Pocket Saver RescueTime computer, Toggl Time
5 Design & Development GitHub, Adobe Creative Cloud, Atome Text Editor, Chrome Dev Tools, Invision, Trello
6 Writing & Editing Grammarly, Evernote, TextExpander WorkFlowly, LibreOffice
7 File Sharing Google Drive, DropBox, OneDrive
8 Appointment Calendly
9 CRM Help Scout, Intercom, Avoma
10 Productivity & Reporting Klaus

While there is clearly a human dimension to the process of digital transformation in business, it was enabled by technology advancement. Four technologies SMAC (Social Mobile Analytics Cloud)  have triggered and determined the success of digital transformation in a variety of business, as well as facilitated the growth of it. The growing sophistication of cloud, mobile, social, and digital information and communication technologies enable teams to collaborate, communicate and work. It has given freedom to work from anywhere & anytime fostering a highly connected, geographically dispersed and hyper-agile connected workforce. These Four Anchors of Digital Transformation SMAC has enabled a faster adoption to a Virtual Work Place/Office.

At the same time, Freelancing has become a reality in today’s modern economies. 53 million freelancers workers in the US, making up 34% of the national workforce log more than one billion work hours per week and bring an estimated $715 billion in earnings into the US economy. European freelance numbers have increased by 45%. UK, the self-employed sector now accounts for nearly 15% of the total workforce. WorkMarket Workforce Productivity Report, which found that 83% of business leaders consider contractors more productive than employees. We will see more and more Freelancers in the Future and therefore, need of less of employees working in office.

Real Estate costs form a major part of an Organisations expenditure. A study from Stanford University found that companies could save an average of $2,000-5000 per employee by letting them work from home.  That same study showed that those who worked from home were more productive than those who regularly worked from a company’s office. There will be far more incentives for organization to adopt a remote working/work from home working culture.

A survey conducted by Indeed UK based – shows an astonishing fact that 48% of employees will change their current job if other companies allows them to work from home. And 53% of respondents are even ready to take salary cut in return of option to work from home.

The remote working/work from home is the ultimate in flexibility and balances work & life seamlessly. “The future workplace may, and is in fact likely to be a virtual space,” Memoori wrote in their Future workplace report.

The future has already been sneaking in parts upon us but with the advent of COVID19 pandemic, it seems inevitable that it will be a key characteristic of the Future of Work and

Work from Home may be the New Normal.

 

 

 

 

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