In March 2020, the largest “work-from-home” experiment in history began.
The moment entire companies moved their workforces remote, business owners and employees alike both started to realize new realities about their jobs. For years, people had been told, “It’s essential for you to be in the office,” only to suddenly realize that being in the office wasn’t so essential after all. Zoom calls easily replaced dozens of weekly in-person meetings. Manual tasks such as filling out paperwork suddenly couldn’t be performed the same way, forcing companies to accelerate their digital transformation efforts. Processes that seemed to work fine in a physical office space suddenly showed how dated and inefficient they were. And every executive or manager’s fears of remote employees doing nothing but watching Netflix and playing Xbox all day at home instead of working were eased.
Companies all over the world have realized that working from home is not only more efficient but more suitable for the wants and needs of today’s workers. According to one company interviewed by Forbes, as well as research by Harvard Business Review, working from home boosts company-wide productivity—it doesn’t squander it.
Life after COVID-19 for businesses will never be the same.
Here are the two big changes we can expect to see moving forward.
BUSINESSES WILL EMBRACE FLEXIBILITY
Thirty years ago, 10 years ago, even 5 years ago, it wasn’t exactly “professional” for you to take a call with a client or customer if you weren’t “in the office.”
In the past few years though, and especially the past few months, it has now become culturally acceptable to be more honest and transparent about your personal life as an employee or company leader—so long as it doesn’t interfere with the quality of your servicing the company and/or its clients.
For example, during the pandemic and needing to work from home, it has become increasingly common for a dog to bark or to hear a screaming kid for a second or two on a conference call. But that doesn’t mean the client or customer is immediately going to say, “This is so unprofessional. I want to cancel my account.” If anything, they’re going to say something like, “My dog was barking like crazy this morning. I know the feeling.”