As if taken from a zombiecalypse movie, the coronavirus outbreak has impacted the entire world in a significant way. Without meeting people, how does work get done?
Keeping the Economy Running
Some organisations have continued by declaring themselves essential services. But take obviously non-essential services — real estate, information technology, financial services outside of banking. How are these industries to function?
The obvious answer is to find a new operating model. Many organisations were already going digital, or were in the process. Now those organisations are most suited to survive.
Work from Home
Work from home is not anything new. In the ITES sector, the WFH paradigm has existed for more than a decade. But it was always considered a secondary mode of working, never the primary. That assumption has now been forcibly overturned.
With most businesses scrambling to find ways of working online, more and more tools are being sought for online collaboration. My wife Dr. Harshaja, who runs 13 Llama Interactive, put together a quick guide on some of the tools people can use during work from home — video conferencing, project management, shared documents. The infrastructure was already there; people just hadn’t needed it urgently before.
What Comes Next
The human race is very resilient and always finds a way out. This period will pass. And I think we will keep more from it than we expect — the flexibility, the reduced commuting, the proof that distributed teams can work.