Pandemic Market Fit: Preparing For The Post-COVID Workplace
About a week ago, I was reading the weekend newsletter from The Ken which featured Vietnam’s Rice ATMs — A perfect example of innovation in the time of a natural disaster. Perfect, because it ensures mass distribution of an essential resource while minimizing human-to-human contact. That is to say, it’s the right product surfacing at the right time to satisfy a very relevant need. Without question, it really is a Pandemic Market Fit!
Extrapolating the same idea, it’s easy to find that the concept holds true within the scope of workforce dynamics as well. Which is in a manner similar to the methodical growth of the Gig Economy post the Great Recession of 2008–2009. Quoting a study by Colorado State University’s Regional Economic Development Institute:
In the case of the Great Recession, a particularly large number of people lost their jobs, so there was an even greater pool of potential workers who might tend towards self-employment. In addition, the expansion of the Internet, smartphones, and mobile apps during this time period generated wholly new avenues for self-employment.
The state of the Gig Economy today has matured to a great extent. Its modern form is governed by three defining blocks — Technology Platform Companies, Workers, and Consumers.
The serendipitous growth of the freelance resource marketplaces such as Fiverr, Freelancer.com, Upwork and eCommerce enabler Shopify has further paved the way towards a sophisticated Non-Employer Establishment market segment. One of the greatest advantages of being part of this tidal wave was that geography wasn’t a barrier to entry.
Along with that, people with enough capital could supplement what they were earning through their regular income with part-time gigs. Some even turning passion projects to startups or specialist agencies.
To add an interesting anecdote, I worked with Lead Generation folks based out of Bangladesh while hacking out early-stage growth for my last organisation. The freelance ecosystem knows no borders!
Ultimately, all of the above developments couldn’t have come at a more opportune time for ushering in ‘The New Normal’.
Flogging the Dead Horse
The New Normal has been the poster child for any piece of media that has anything to do with COVID19. As of May 2020, we’ve comfortably arrived at the conclusion that life, as we know it, is not going to be what it was before February 2020. That’s a big claim to make within just 3 months of societal and economic upheaval.
In these three months, we’ve seen oil prices crash, aviation coming to a strict halt, companies seeking government bailout and most importantly — Jobs being lost. The United States has received 30M+ filings for unemployment benefits since Mid-March. Domestically, the Indian startup ecosystem has been walking on a tightrope with a spree of layoffs in even the mightiest of companies — Oyo, Blackbuck, BharatPe, Meesho and Treebo among others.
A cursory glance at LinkedIn would provide enough insight into the number of internships being withdrawn. Affecting the future crop of MBA and Engineering graduates.
To take a page out of the boilerplate email template circulating within the corporate world — The new normal leaves us “in a strange and uncertain time”. Confused, scared, but hopeful.
Where There’s a Home, There’s an Office
Along with gig work, another result from the last recession was the practice of ‘densification’ — Packing more people in the limited space that an office has. Creating the popular, yet often maligned, concept of the Open Office.
For those of us who are lucky enough to still be employed, there’s a good chance that we won’t be heading back into an open office anytime soon. According to the commercial real estate firm, Cushman & Wakefield’s ‘6 Feet Office’ plan, the cubicles are poised to return. However, this begs a new question — Would all of us be going back to offices at all?
The City of Dubai, which has slowly been easing its lockdown measures, only allow 30% of employees to work in the office at a given time. Whereas in the United States, 34% of all employees, as of a survey run between April 1 to 5, are working from home. Employees are now investing in better home office set-ups, as can be seen by the many ‘WFHChallenges’ going around LinkedIn along with shopping data trends. What was once a perk, could be here to stay in the long term.
Building Your Career Like a Product
Now that we’re aware of what has slowly transpired Pre-COVID and the events hammering down on us in the present day, it’s fair to ask the million dollar question:
So, now what?
While navigating through a variety of roles during my time at Playment, I likened myself to a Product Manager who kept tinkering, pivoting and un/re-learning to be as relevant in the industry as I possibly can. My career is my product, and my skillsets are my features. This is exactly how I plan on approaching the job market, pandemic or not.
Up until this early January, ‘Work From Home’ was, at best, a gimmick targetted towards attracting millennials towards the company. With a foreseeable reduction in non-essential travel and changing workplace dynamics, remote work ‘readiness’ would be a key factor in employability as the economy trudges its way forward. If working from home was seen as a day of reduced productivity in the past, looking forward, employers may be keen to hire people who can deliver value despite the lack of physical presence. Our soft skills, geared with the assumption that we’d be under the same roof, would need to be fine-tuned to adapt to a virtual setting.
Now would be the best time to take a page out of the freelancer's handbook — Building your personal brand. With lockdown measures still in effect in most places across the world, the current downtime would be the best period to upskill, work on personal projects and double down on what defines you as a brand.
This might be the best period to transform yourself as the right person, at the right time, satisfying a very relevant market need.
The Post-COVID workplace might not be a 45-minute drive away. It might exactly be where you’re reading this article from.
