Future of Work Culture After the Pandemic
Expertise and Employment
As the world opens its doors again, the IT industry evolved with the times with remote working and a robust work from culture. This new culture has bought the resilience of technologies enabling a collaborative and fostering environment. Remote working is becoming a new normal for companies looking for niche technical resources and the trend of contracting is also going up. As a CEO, I always have a weather eye on the needs of the industries and on the trending technologies, as staff augmentation and remote working becomes acceptable form employment, this unprecedented access to technical talents means that no development challenge is impossible, and there is no such as a niche technology.
Data Collection and Decisions
Organzations have started to collect a lot of data on their employees, not the kind of data when an employee joins a company. The data I am talking about is the daily data such as virtual log in and log out times, tracking computer usage, monitoring internal communications, and the lot. I personally never liked the idea of collecting this much data, tri-weekly meetings, and daily one-on-one conversations with the employees are a better way to keep employees engaged and track their productivity as well. These conversations are a huge source of inspiration and highly motivational for the employees. These conversations have to be in the comfort of the employee and not of the employer.
Complexity and Flexibility
The pandemic has increased the organizational complexity, project managers are juggling between projects, employees, clients, and meetings. HR managers are confused between hiring remote staff, to be honest, any kind of staff for that matter. The increased reliance on technology for collaboration and communication cannot ever match a meeting inside a conference room. It should be understandable that employees will be divided on the communication part. The existing workflows may have been created for efficiency and productivity, but now companies will have to be flexible with their workflows to account for the work from home realities. Having good communication will change from a personal skill to a professional skill.
Contingent and Contract
Many employees lost their jobs as soon as the pandemic hit, this new reality gave the acceptance of non-standard work models and non-standard employment opportunities. This presents unique opportunities for employers and organzations to hire exciting new talents, experience with niche technologies, and accept that contract employees are very part o the organzation. The existing employees need to be enlightened about the importance of collaboration and communication with remote staff and contract employees. Another way of coping with the new way of working to change the metrics and KPIs. Instead of having daily broad productivity goals, it is better to have task goals and if it is possible it would better if the task’s goals are shared between two or more employees. This fosters an environment of collaboration throughout the project.
One and One Cent
The vaccination wars have started and the pandemic may not be the same beast as it now from one year on. But this evolution of employment was always on the horizon with the rise of staff augmentation, managed teams, contractors, and freelancers. This work culture will stay for better or worse, it is better to adopt it and make the best out of it when it is the option around before it becomes a choice.
