Future of Work - Post Covid - The New Normal

The Story:

The eye catching very large office spaces in prime localilty, Huge commercial real estates, Large cafeterias, Beautiful gardens and lawns, enviable visitor spaces, Top tech gadgets at the front offices, are some of the things we experienced as well as the visiting customers from foreign countries.

The commercial real estate rent is one of the significant component of the Fixed cost, administrative expenses including lavish decorative lighting and huge electricity bills.

Some of the offices designed with the archiac laws of the 19th century provided huge spaces for employee seating without any due consideration to return on investment. The flowing Dollars and Euros had made this possible, but not any longer. The true hero for championing this massive transformation is Mr. Covid - Our unknown neighbour.

What the indicators tells us?

For many of the Information technology companies, Shared services as well typical enterprises, and operating with IT capabilities can move jobs to Work from Home (WFH) to the extent of 40% to 60% or even greater. Therefore, Brick - and - Mortar operations to a reduced size and scale, is becoming a possibility now.

This was not serious a thought on a large scale 6 to 8 months before. However, crisis makes humans think Off the shelf!

New normal, Future of Work, covid_19

Which areas are to be impacted?

  • High end Treasury and finance functions which requires high level of guidance and oversight will not move to WFH

  • Traditional enterprises will take time to digest to the new normal. However, new generations will take the leap forward

  • The Start ups had already started the journey towards this. They will lead this revolution by using their creative thought process

  • Marketing & Sales offices which requires physical presence and to create the intangibibility of Service experience, will not move to WFH.

  • Banks may be slow movers in certain geographies. However, virtual offices and offices with 1 man army with WFH, will lead the Cards and Sales functions

  • 100% of the transaction processing with the exclusions of High data confidentiality, Medical and personal records, Credit card data or other financial or regulatory restricted information will move to WFH

  • All information technology areas from coding to customer experience except for client confidential needs, protection of personal data, central bank, regulatory and GDPR and such other requirements will move to WFH

The Balancing Scale:

Pros:

  • Quality of work need to sync along with work life balance, lesser travel, and traffic jams.

  • Emergence of news jobs- Why not - This will set the road ahead for current and next generations

  • Innovation opportunities are also coming along the way to crisis, New Thoughts, New Enterprises and New Processes

  • Technology will be a great winner. New and disruptive technologies are and will emerge out of the Crisis What is next to AI, Neural science.....?

Cons:

  • The work output of employees will see a radical change. This may give mixed results

  • Managers Beware - You need to wear a different 'Hat' to manage a different work group.

  • Too much of WFH with the sole consideration of Cost optimization will see negative results

  • Fradsters will find new ways to commit financial and regulatory crimes. Secured technologies, with greater emphasis on information and data security are the immediate needs