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Five developments in the labor market driven by the pandemic that should be retained
Igor Trisuzzi, Senior Consultant at Yoctoo, highlights the trends that exist in organizations in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The job market is constantly evolving and adapting to these changes is extremely necessary. A year after the start of the pandemic, I have noticed an interesting phenomenon: some work models and management methods, which have provided enormous benefits for both companies and employees, have spread quickly and are not temporary changes.
Contrary to what we saw in the past, organizations are having to adapt and stop seeing these changes as something temporary – but as strategies that, if implemented efficiently, can contribute to the entire functioning and productivity of the business. Among them, I highlight five trends that I have seen most in organizations:
Remote work, full home office and home office
Remote work (when the employee has complete flexibility of the workplace, being able to choose to work a few days of the week in the office) as well as the full home office (100% of the workday spent at home) and the home office (part of the workday at home and part in the office) are leading the list of major developments that offer great advantages.
In addition to having great popularity among practitioners, it has been possible to note the increase in productivity and the possibility of hiring professionals from different regions and even from other countries. In a survey byRunrun.it– a software provider that is a task manager – 81.5% of respondents said they would like to work on alternate days (in-person and remote). Also according to this study, 57.5% of companies expect to continue working 100% remotely.
Improved communication
Informal communication was transformed and consolidated, expanding the points and frequency of contact between professionals, which was extremely important for the workflow. Thanks to communication tools like Slack and Zoom, the distance generated by social isolation has not prevented companies from maintaining clear and close communication between leaders and teams.
Quite the opposite! In some cases, it ended up forcing the teams to keep themselves updated and informed so that the whole process would flow even if at a distance. In HR, a term has emerged about this trend: the virtual engagement of teams. I can say that we are still in a testing phase, but I see clearly that many actions and face-to-face procedures, previously so common, but not so efficient, will soon be extinguished.
Flexibility and balance
Working at home gives us great flexibility to make our own hours, mainly because we don’t have to travel to the company’s headquarters. In spite of this, great care must be taken so that it does not end up overloading the day to day and make it mostly dedicated to work.
It is necessary to establish a balance between work and personal life, separating part of the day for leisure and rest activities, which provide well-being and maintain our physical and mental health. What was previously more difficult to predict, more flexible working hours – especially in more traditional companies, has become the reality of many professionals at this moment of social isolation, where professionals who enjoy this ‘benefit’ are unlikely to give it up after social distancing ends.
Infrastructure
Having a quality technology infrastructure, even before the pandemic, was already an indispensable factor for the good functioning of companies, especially those that already worked in the online environment.
With the pandemic, this need has become one of the main concerns of organizations to continue guaranteeing the performance of activities and the delivery of products and services. It is not by chance that companies needed to accelerate their investments in more stable and secure digital platforms, in addition to those that actually needed to make Digital Transformation a new reality in their operations.
Allied to this, companies also needed to provide better remote working conditions with more robust VPN infrastructures and assisting, for example, in internet packages for employees and helping to provide even physical infrastructure, such as better computers, tables and chairs. These infrastructure demands were lessons that companies take with them to a future scenario, where the need to serve their employees will remain.
Digitization of internal processes
Many highly bureaucratic and predominantly manual processes had to be adapted and digitized with the pandemic. More traditional companies that did not have a mindset that focused on digitalization, suffered more in the pandemic. For this reason, companies that offer solutions that promise to reduce bureaucracy and simplify processes, as is the case with many startups, are experiencing a dizzying growth, even in a challenging scenario like this.
Finally, I want to emphasize that all these developments are interconnected. Without communication, teams cannot function. Without flexibility and balance, people will not have good physical and mental health.
Without infrastructure, there is no way to work and provide products and services efficiently and effectively. Therefore, together they represent gains that have been achieved over the last year and will again be achieved in the years to come. These trends will be here to stay. However, I say with certainty that they will not be the only ones. The world is constantly evolving, as is the job market.
