He was asked about the future of the P&C workplace in a post-COVID world. Remote working on a larger scale also offers companies the flexibility to deal with unexpected events in the future, such as the COVID-19 crisis. A different theory posits that employers and employees starved of interpersonal connections will rebel against remote work. From the 1840s to the 1950s, the length of the average American workweek (for manufacturing workers and nonsupervisory personnel) dropped from 70 hours to 40.5 hours. The pandemic will only accelerate this trend. There is a soaring demand for virtual workplace solutions that help teams continue to collaborate, communicate, and operate as usual. Employees with liberal “work-from-anywhere” arrangements have also been found to be more productive than colleagues who were allowed to work from home but were still required to make regular trips to the office. As the COVID-19 pandemic drives profound societal and organizational shifts, leaders have the opportunity to return to work by designing the future of work, building on the lessons and practices their organizations executed during the … In addition, there is ample anecdotal evidence that hiring more workers to each work fewer hours increases individual productivity, making those companies more attractive to top talent. How coronavirus COVID-19 is accelerating the future of work. It is clear, though, that “futuristic” trends are emerging, having been catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The coronavirus is forcing enterprises to rethink the way they do business and dust off … On the plus side, there is more freedom, more flexible hours and more streamlined morning commutes. The sudden switch to remote digital work, overnight and en masse, has the potential to accelerate changes in how work is performed and the way we think about working arrangements. Although the technology to facilitate remote work has been around for over a decade, COVID-19 has forced hundreds of millions of employers and employees worldwide to engage in a sudden, massive, real-time experiment with remote work arrangements. In addition to reducing the number of employees in the office to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, many organizations will incorporate work-from-home aspects into their future frameworks. In fact, BCG’s recent Workplace of the Future employer survey found that companies expect about 40% of their employees to follow a remote-working model in the future. In 2012, just 39% of US employees worked off-site at least some of the time. Put bluntly: while many employees thrive in a less structured environment with minimal supervision, others require more frequent “intervention” to keep them focused and engaged. Building a sustainable post-COVID future. These financial gains, when paired with the minimum disruption or effect on productivity levels and staff wellbeing, leaves little reason for many companies to move back to traditional working styles even after the pandemic ceases. In fact, among high-paid US white-collar workers, the trend toward 50-plus-hour workweeks has gained momentum since the 1970s. One financial services company told us it believes a hybrid model (rather than 100% remote) would likely be the working model of choice for many of its employees, who see 100% remote work as unsustainable. The goal of the union was, essentially, to provide workers with greater work-life balance. This comes from the reduction of both on-site technology spend, as well as reduced costs in real estate expenses. Many believe that this move towards work from home will be a more permanent change, rather than a temporary one. Many may resist returning to the 40-plus-hour workweek – with limited paid vacation and sick days – when the crisis passes. As German designer Konstantin Grcic argued “the office is everywhere I go to work.”. Readers share their most pressing questions and concerns about the future of work in post-Covid societies. Although it’s just a start-up, the company now competes with corporations like Samsung for engineering talent. Although work-life balance has long concerned US workers, especially Millennials, only sporadic gains were achieved prior to the pandemic. The big question is to what degree they will survive the crisis. Search for publications, programs, event, people and much more... who typically don’t fare well during prolonged periods, 48% of remote workers exhibit more discretionary effort. Remember the days when you could effortlessly walk over to a colleague and chat about a project? All rights reserved. The just released World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report found that more than 80% of employers expect to make wider use of remote work and to digitize working processes. But today – thanks in part to the ubiquity of the (now endangered) “open-office plan” – millions of workers have had their hours cut in order to maintain social distancing in the workplace. Many people are now used to doing this virtually – and although some of us will be returning to the workplace, it looks like remote working is here to stay in some form or other. Ltd South Beach Tower 38 Beach Road #17-11 Singapore 189767, IMD Chemin de Bellerive 23 PO Box 915 CH-1001 Lausanne Switzerland Tel: +41 21 618 01 11 [email protected] www.imd.org, Copyright © 2006-2021 IMD - International Institute for Management Development. This attitude shift suggests that we will see many more software robots in the workforce after the current crisis subsides. 1. Inspiring technologies that can transform your business For individual business executives and teams who are looking to gain a deeper understanding of the latest innovative technologies. Also known as “digital workers”, AI-enabled software programs will be “hired” in greater numbers to assist human employees (and sometimes replace them) by taking over certain administrative tasks, as well as “virus-friendly” customer-service interactions. Thank you! Similar remote work statistics are observed in other parts of the world. Despite predictions to the contrary and calls – especially among female employees – for even shorter workweeks and flexible schedules, little has changed in 70 years. Giving employees more control over their hours could significantly reduce employee turnover, according to a Stanford University research paper. Before COVID-19 hit, co-working spaces were projected to increase more than 40% worldwide. It’s been nearly a year since the novel coronavirus began spreading around the world. Once COVID-19 is behind us, companies should apply what they have experienced and learned during this process to continually improve their remote work policies for the long term. Learn how remote work may become the "next normal." The truth is somewhere in between, but a greater proportion of organizations are clearly opting for the benefits of virtual offices. On the other side of the coin, there is also a huge amount of employees who don’t prefer to work from home, whether it’s due to the various distractions in their house or their preference to commute to a physical work space. At the same time, there are financial benefits for the employees too: a study done by online recruitment platform FlexJobs found that remote employees save as much as $4,000 a year from commuting, office meals, and other miscellaneous expenses. The message was clear: the future of work is not pre-determined, it is up to us to shape it. A new report from MIT Technology Review, which explored the extent to which different jobs could be supported by AI, found that “between 32 and 50 million US jobs could be increasingly assisted by technology to reduce health risks posted by human interaction and safeguard productivity in time of crisis.” In the longer term, “where AI assistance is currently less feasible […] roles such as cashiers, servers and drivers, whose constituent tasks can be fully automated, may be at risk as retailers and restaurants […] seek to operate with fewer staff.”. A recent Gartner poll showed that 48% of employees will likely work remotely at least part of the time after COVID-19 versus 30% before the pandemic. How does the huge shift in workplace behavior that we are seeing now impact how we work in the future? Remote work preferences and policies have been drastically influenced by the COVID-19 outbreak. Outside the US, a big victory occurred in 2018, when Europe’s largest industrial labor union, IG Metall, negotiated the right to work as few as 28 hours per week for German metal workers. To request such permission and for further inquiries, please contact IMD at, Global Center for Digital Business Transformation. 74% of the CFOs surveyed said that they expect to move previously on-site employees remote post-COVID-19. Finally, remote working can give a renewed boost to cooperation and cohesion. Let’s explore three common predictions. Prediction 1: Remote work is here to stay Many believe that this move towards work from home will be a more permanent change, rather than a temporary one. By 2016, that figure had risen to 43%. The concept of work as being something primarily done within the four walls of a company’s office will be regarded as outdated. The difference in the pre-COVID remote work numbers and post-COVID plans – and the large number of businesses who moved some or all their workforce to remote during the crisis itself – tells us that COVID-19 not only is a significant catalyst in shifting to remote, but also heavily impacts future plans around remote work. For many industries, work will change drastically within the next five years. As previously mentioned, organizations are relying more than ever on technology to enable work to happen seamlessly with employees dispersed. Software robots to infiltrate the workspace. The COVID-19 pandemic is having a profound impact on the present state of work.The crisis is throwing millions of people across the globe out of employment, sending people with good jobs home to work remotely, and exposing millions of front-line workers providing the necessities of life to a deadly virus. 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