The world has endured terrible and testing times throughout its history, and what is certain, the world continues to progress and develop during and following these episodes. It could even be argued that the greatest technological advancements and societal shifts come about because of crisis, and at the very least their development is sped up.
The end of World War Two saw the formulation of the International Monetary Fund [1], The UN [2] and the Welfare State, [3] and technology advanced exponentially [4], bringing with it material prosperity in the decades to come.
The economic crash of 2008 caused unemployment to rise to a peak of 8.1% [5] and the UK economy to shrink for five quarters in a row [6]. However, this devastating global event, known as a ‘structural break’ in economics [7], rendered obsolete many existing patterns of behaviour and brought about greater financial controls, including the stricter use of stress tests, which scrutinises the strength, resilience and capacity of banks to deal with serious economic scenarios.
Some companies found opportunities to thrive through this changing environment, whilst others failed to evolve and became obsolete. Square banking was established in 2009 with the aim of providing “fair and square” banking for all. With society’s trust of big banking and the financial system as a whole rapidly diminishing after the economic crash, Square saw an opportunity to provide an antidote and has flourished since.
Predicting what this new world will look like is the tricky part and I don’t profess to have it all figured out. I am certainly not hiding an all-seeing crystal ball. However, I do believe that Covid-19 constitutes another ‘structural break’ and therefore many of the behaviours, thought patterns and ways of working that we currently subscribe to will change beyond recognition, especially in how organisations use technology to attract, manage and retain employees post Covid-19.
Technology as an agent of change
Remote working:
Most of us are now working from home and are becoming comfortable connecting and collaborating through one of the many software packages available such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams. The current Covid-19 crisis and the subsequent requirement to work from home has proven working efficiently and effectively from home is possible and organisations will struggle to dispute this.
Employees will begin to demand remote working be a part of their working week [8] and organisations will need to adapt and evolve to this growing demand to compete and attract the best talent on the market.
Couple this growing demand for remote working with the rapidly improving speed, and governments’ plans for ubiquitous deployment of 5G systems and global connectivity in general, and we start to picture a world that is virtually connected and able to work and interact as easily and cheaply as ever before, from anywhere in the world.
This movement towards more remote working will reduce the need to travel to and from the office, reducing the burden on our transport systems, meaning less cars on the roads. As well as reclaiming hours of wasted travel time, this reduced need to commute is likely to reduce carbon emissions [9] and provide greater access to work for all groups in society [10].
Organisations that can embrace flexible working fully will be the organisations that are able to attract the best available talent and evolve to survive and flourish in the new world of work post Covid-19.
However, hurdles such as how to maintain collaboration and a sense of team, alongside productivity and performance of employees who are not in the same room will be huge hurdles, and ones that organisations will have to grapple with in the coming months and years.
Learning and Development:
Learning and Development platforms have become the go to resource for learning as workers seek to use their free time effectively and employers utilise the platforms for their training and development needs.
During the Covid-19 crisis, online L&D has proven accessible around other commitments, flexible to learner’s needs and easy to implement for organisations, taking the place of face to face classroom style learning, which by its very nature is more restrictive due to the need for being physically onsite.
Personally, I like to imagine a learning landscape that can be accessed from anywhere in the world, from any device and that is truly flexible around other important life commitments. Employees could learn on the train whilst commuting to and from work, at night after the children are in bed, whilst working from home or even from another country.
Looking into the future, with the price of machine learning and AI dropping and global connectivity becoming a reality, can L&D platforms become truly smart, fully connected, universal and embed themselves into our daily lives, and will employers embrace this form of learning to give employees greater flexibility, whilst doing great work?
Clearly, online L&D platforms offer great alternatives for organisations to develop their L&D practices and provide employees with the ability to learn flexibly and around other life commitments. However, organisations need to be wary about embracing a totally online experience and dismissing face to face learning completely. For one, motivating unmotivated employees to learn when they aren’t in the office may prove difficult, and those employees who learn better in groups and through more natural ways may struggle to get the most out of a purely online platform.
Recruitment:
Although recruitment for most organisations during this uncertain time has been put on hold, from the technological advancements discussed above, a potential shift in how recruitment within many organisations is performed following the end of the Covid-19 crisis is likely to occur.
With the use of video conferencing and messenger to enable home working comes a greater comfort level for more people, young and old, in using these technologies for activities that previously would have been performed face to face. This will cascade into recruitment and we may see face to face interviews before a job offer as unnecessary.
Although, I concede that on an individual basis, employer and employee may prefer a face to face interaction before signing on the dotted line, especially for more senior positions, face to face interviews and assessments require travel and involve costs, childcare may be necessary in order to attend, and being able to interview during one’s lunchtime, if in employment, is restricted.
We are already seeing technology being used in recruitment, but will the Covid-19 crisis act as a catalyst for making online tools such as video interviewing, AI evaluation of candidates and total online interaction between candidate and employer the norm rather than the exception?
Employers who embrace this modern approach to recruitment may see an increased candidate pool to choose from, reduced discrimination, and as a result, a more diverse workforce with more creative ideas to tap into, and ultimately make finding the right candidate easier, quicker and cheaper.
A new world:
What the Covid-19 crisis has already brought is an increased reliance on technology to allow work to continue, and a realisation for many that good work and learning can be done from anywhere, not just from the office.
What I hope to see is a generation of organisations embracing this new way of working and learning so that employees can do great work whilst also having great lives outside of work. In fact, I predict that organisations that fail to evolve to this new world of work and the demands of a new generation of workers will no longer be able to attract the high performing talent they need to succeed in the longer-term.
Reference List:
1. https://www.imf.org/external/about/history.htm
2. https://www.un.org/un70/en/content/history/index.html
3. https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/history-science-technology-and-medicine/history-medicine/birth-the-welfare-state
4. https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/inventions-and-innovations-wwii.html
5. https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotinwork/unemployment/timeseries/mgsx/lms
6. https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/articles/the2008recession10yearson/2018-04-30
7. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/strategy-in-a-structural-break?cid=other-eml-cls-mip-mck&hlkid=e5cac0cb707c462d9f29b2c649a9daa9&hctky=10925375&hdpid=9d2f95c2-fcae-428c-8b34-70bc454c9700
8. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52414376
9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nShlnBJko5s
10.King, Michelle. (2020) The Fix. Overcoming the invisible barriers that are holding women back at work. New York: Atria Books
