A guide to thriving in the post-COVID-19
workplace
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/workers-thrive-covid-19-skills/?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2719847_Agenda_weekly-22May2020&utm_term=&emailType=Newsletter
Even before COVID-19, many workers around the globe
lacked key skills - including digital capabilities.
Upskilling in preparation for the changes to come post-
COVID-19 should be a critical part of response and
recovery.
There are four steps workers and businesses can take today
to prepare for tomorrow: Accelerate the move to platform,
transition to digital/virtual work, assess your skillset and
expand it as needed, and plan for the future.
The pandemic has accelerated the need to ensure that people around
the globe have the necessary technology skills and access to do their
jobs. Even as China shows signs of recovery and the number of new
daily infections worldwide appears to have stabilized, the US has seen
an unprecedented number of people file for unemployment, and 57% of
Americans surveyed recently report feeling worried about losing their
jobs.
The current picture is bleak — and many parts of the world still haven’t
felt the pandemic's full impact. However, recovery will come, so what
should individuals be doing to make sure they can come back to the
workforce stronger?
Shoring up skills
Many of the skills people need to be employable during and after COVID-19
are digital, which will enable, but not guarantee, resilience, creativity and
the ability to collaborate with others. In areas where the pandemic is still an
active threat, people need to be able to get work done while operating at a
distance from co-workers. Managers and team leaders need the skills
required to motivate and manage distributed teams. Job seekers may find
themselves having to compete in a digital, fast-changing digital work with
which they are unfamiliar.
Regional disparities will likely grow, with regions already left behind in the
digital era experiencing increased hardship. Two such examples are rural
areas, where less robust healthcare systems will exacerbate the
pandemic’s impact, and some urban areas, especially in the developing
world, where large populations were facing dire employment situations even
before COVID-19.
If surviving and thriving in the wake of COVID-19 are our goals as a society,
where should we start - and how should we chart our future course?
1. Accelerate the move to platform
One of COVID-19’s most immediate economic effects is to accelerate
efforts that businesses, governments and individuals were already making
to not only digitalize, but also transition to a platform model.
A platform business takes an approach similar to that of technology giants.
The platforms these companies have created comprise ecosystems of
technologies, services and products that bring consumers and producers
together, and which can scale quickly and encourage third-party
collaboration, thus extending their reach.
Our collective ability to operate successfully in a platform-based world will
become much more important now because linear models - the most basic
example of which is the factory assembly line - are not agile or resilient
enough to withstand major disruptions like COVID-19. Such disruptions will
become much more common in the decade ahead, so the importance of
preparing our businesses, governments and institutions for this cannot be
overstated.
Not all sectors are wholly suited to the platform model, but many industries
and companies that haven’t started to evolve in that direction will be forced
to do so much faster. As an individual, if you own a business you should
explore opportunities of adopting a platform-business model or partnering
with a platform and should prepare to compete with them. And all of us -
whether owners or employees - need to study platforms to understand how
they affect our lives, our work, and our future.
2. Transition to digital/virtual work
The requirement that we engage fully in the virtual realm right now is
pushing people in many areas of business to learn not only digital skills, but
also to improve auxiliary skills such as collaboration, creative problem-
solving and openness to new ideas. Managers and team leaders, for
example, are having to learn how to motivate and engage teams from afar.
At work, everything that can be done online will be, while activities we can’t
do remotely will have to be reconfigured somehow.
Here we get a glimpse of how well-suited existing platform companies are
to surviving COVID-19 - and thriving afterwards. In an ecosystem, the
players rely on each other collectively, while the virtual aspect adds critical
flexibility overall, so weakness in some areas won’t necessarily sink the
entire enterprise.
3. Assess your skillset and expand it as needed
For those who gain time in the day because they now work remotely and no
longer have to factor in a commute, there’s an opportunity to use the time to
gain new skills. If you have been displaced or lost your job as a result of
COVID-19, this offers a way to round out your skills and increase your
employability.
Of course, many people now have to spend time caring for children who are
not in school or other family members. Nonetheless, as people get used to
changes in the rhythm of daily life in a world where work and personal lives
are happening in a shared space, they can and should build time to assess
their skills - digital and otherwise - into their new routines.
You won’t know what skills you need to bolster until you assess your
current knowledge, so it makes sense to start with a diagnostic. PwC’s free
Digital Fitness app, for example, allows anyone to assess their skills as well
as boost knowledge in topics that help shape your behaviors and mindset.
At the same time, you’ve probably learned new skills to continue doing your
job without leaving home. In the weeks of quarantine, you’ve likely had to
bring different skills to your work: managing time to get work done and tend
to others who are quarantined with you. Whatever reserves of resilience
you have will likely have been tested - and you can draw on that as you
move forward.
4. Plan for the future
Planning for the future in uncertain times is tricky at best, but we can
extrapolate how things might shake out by doing some personal scenario
planning, similar to the way businesses set strategy. The key is to begin
thinking about where demand for work will exist and how best to prepare for
those spaces, while realising that there are real uncertainties in the answers
to those questions. The type of work that is robust across a lot of different
futures is not a bad way to start.
And, in such times as these, it’s always good advice to bet on known
trends, rather than try to anticipate what might be. For example, some parts
of the world with demographically older population profiles - such as
Europe, North America and Asia - may respond differently to these trends
than populations in other parts of the world where there is a need for
education and as they are about to enter the workforce. Finding ways to
connect to these trends, and the implications for where there is likely to be
work, makes sense.
Some other COVID-19 topics:
The best way to avoid future pandemics? Protect the natural world:
A guide to thriving in the post-COVID-19 workplace
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/workers-thrive-covid-19-skills/?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2719847_Agenda_weekly-22May2020&utm_term=&emailType=Newsletter
3 challenges in creating a coronavirus vaccine – and how they are being overcome
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-industry/?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2719847_Agenda_weekly-22May2020&utm_term=&emailType=Newsletter
5 ways global travel will change before we find a COVID-19 vaccine
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/global-travel-covid-19-vaccine-holiday/?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2719847_Agenda_weekly-22May2020&utm_term=&emailType=Newsletter
The best way to avoid future pandemics? Protect the natural world
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/seychelles-conservation-nature-coronavirus-pandemics/?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2719847_Agenda_weekly-22May2020&utm_term=&emailType=Newsletter
COVID-19 Risks Outlook: A Preliminary Mapping and its Implications
https://www.weforum.org/reports/covid-19-risks-outlook-a-preliminary-mapping-and-its-implications
Challenges and Opportunities in the Post-COVID-19 World
https://www.weforum.org/reports/post-covid-19-challenges-and-opportunities
How the Fourth Industrial Revolution can help us beat COVID-19
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/how-the-fourth-industrial-revolution-can-help-us-handle-the-threat-of-covid-19/