COVID-19 Gets us Closer to Remote Work — Why Leaders Need to Pay Attention
We are living in interesting times. As COVID-19 sweeps the world and governments struggle to get a handle on the impact, knowledge workers are asked to work from home to curtail the spread of disease and minimize the damaging impact on the global economy.
While this happens, silently in the background, highly capable creators, gig workers, and entrepreneurs are thriving in the cracks exposed by a sudden need for remote work.
Business leaders need to pay attention to this.
In addition, politicians and community leaders need to take a hard look at their own response to COVID-19. Before governments could react responsibly and take steps to reduce the spread of infection, leadership in companies like Google, Shopify, Amazon, and AT&T asked employees to work from home to limit the spread of disease.
This act alone may have saved countless lives and minimized the impact felt by communities. In addition, the building of remote collaboration tools by these companies (born out of the global recession in 2008) may be the only thing protecting the world economy right now because it’s these tools that keep people working.
Politicians and community leaders need to pay attention to this.
Do we really need to be present?
It’s becoming quickly evident that knowledge workers really don’t need to be in an office to effectively work.
I’ve asked the “do we really need to be present” question for years as a global consultant. Every single time I boarded an airplane to travel to a company somewhere in the world, I would ask, do I really need to travel to this place to do work? Why can’t we collaborate using one of the many remote tools available?
Is presenteeism so valuable that we’re spending millions of dollars on travel, housing, spreading disease, damaging the environment, and crippling local communities because workers migrate to big cities?
The old ways of thinking and working are damaging. Leaders need to pay attention to this.
The creation of a co-dependent ecosystem
During the days of COVID-19, it doesn’t matter what industry you are in, if you set up your knowledge workers to telecommute, you help reduce the pandemic’s infection rate and boost local economies.
In this reality, three types of workers rise to the top: knowledge workers, folks working in the gig economy, and people in the goods/service industry. All three work together in a co-dependent ecosystem.
Knowledge Workers
Knowledge workers are people whose job involves handling or using information.
These people create the platforms, systems, infrastructures, remote working capabilities, security and information needed for people to work remotely and for gig and office workers to continue to perform and keep the economy running.
Gig Workers
As the demand for services from knowledge workers (and others) moves online, gig workers benefit during COVID-19. Especially those who are transporting goods, delivering groceries to houses, bringing cooked food, packages, medication and other essentials to people trapped by the virus.
But these aren’t the only gig workers benefiting.
Others are writing blogs, news articles, editing podcasts, creating artwork for ads and updating websites. They’re making videos for Youtube. They’re taking photos for use in the news.
All use the existing systems created by knowledge workers.
Entrepreneurs of Physical Goods and Services
Humans still need items from the base level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: food, clothing, water, shelter, medication, etc.
This means that there is still a need for business folks who own clothing shops, food services, electronic supply stores, do home repair, repair machines, run sports centres, etc. And, these businesses need inventory management, sales fulfillment and delivery of inventory.
During the 2008 recession, one industry that unexpectedly boomed was the renovations and remodelling industry. This is because people spent more time at home and/or were unable to sell their property. Instead, they renovated their spaces to make them more livable.
What’s become apparent with COVID-19 is that physical goods and services companies that are online (particularly shop owners) and tied to companies like Uber Eats, DoorDash, Instacart, and RenoRun are not as impacted by COVID-19 because they are still able to fulfill their products and services.
Small business owners need to pay attention to this.
Leadership Roles Change
Company leaders and politicians need to pay attention to the change in work dynamics in a co-dependent ecosystem. This reality is changing the power structures of the workforce and wealth distribution in many countries.
In a developing country like India, people can go online and ask a question on Quora, upload a video to YouTube, or write a post on Medium and easily earn enough money to feed a family for a month. Animal Rescues in the United States (and other countries) use the money earned from YouTube videos to place animals, fund charities and save more animals.
This change in the work ecosystem changes the role of leadership. And, what we learn from this is that leadership is not something bestowed on you because of your situation or education level. It is a characteristic that you develop.
It’s no longer the highly educated or politically connected who thrive. It’s the people who have access to technology, are tech-savvy, understand how computer systems interconnect and are able to effectively market their services, business or products.
The role of business leaders in this new world is to nurture and enable these people. The role of government is to protect these people from exploitation.
And, both need to be able to cut through the noise and heat created by COVID-19 to focus on what is now unfolding: that people don’t need to be in an office to succeed in this ecosystem.
