Over the past month, the world of business changed dramatically. Covid-19 left an imprint on companies everywhere, forcing leaders, employees and everyone in between to use video conferencing to stay in touch. The global workforce shifted from coming into an office five days a week to working exclusively from home.
According to Fortune Magazine, “[company leaders] are thinking about more permanent changes in how we all work—shifts that will last much longer than this crisis and could forever reconfigure the entire notion of offices.”
As the dust begins to settle, the new way of communicating is starting to look like a more attractive business model. Old office room technology like desktop phones have been replaced by savvier mobile devices. Businesses turning to online tools to stay in touch are keeping their business operating, and with good reason. These changes have made a positive impact on a business’s bottom line, saving money on the cost of travel and office-space. We’re physically distant but more socially connected through technology than ever before.
Here are five ways the global workforce will change after the mandate for social distancing is over.
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Companies will have a new way to hire employees
In April of 2020, we learned that physical distance did not limit our collective productivity. This presents a huge opportunity for businesses that are looking to bring on new talent.
Since businesses no longer have to be restricted to hiring employees who are local to their headquarters, companies can build a team with the absolute best candidates available for any given position no matter where their employees live.
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Employees will have an improved work-life balance and avoid commuting regularly
Those that live in Los Angeles and other densely populated areas can attest to the nightmares rush hour traffic can have on a person’s commute to work. Commuting to work can be tiresome, adding two to four hours of travelling time to a person’s day and making it so there isn’t much time for enjoying their leisure at home during the work week.
Working from home using mobile communication tools can save employees an enormous amount of free time that could be spent with family, going to the gym or otherwise taking care of their personal lives.
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People’s personal devices will become key parts of business communication
A huge problem many businesses faced when the stay-at-home mandate was announced was adopting a work-from-home model when most of their communication tools stayed in the office. Desktop phones and other old technology made it difficult for businesses to quickly send their workforce home.
Businesses that were early to adopt virtual systems of communication were more suitable to accept the new way of life and continue operating with more flexibility.
Virtual phones make communicating easy and responsive. Both the caller and the receiver have an easier time getting a hold of one another even when neither of the two are in the office. With a virtual phone, people can leverage call-forwarding, a revolutionary tool that lets employees receive calls to their office line on their smart phones.
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Businesses will save thousands on travel costs
Teams that normally spend resources on travelling for business meetings have already saved hundreds by switching to video and audio conferencing. While there are still many benefits to in-person meetings, online and mobile communication tools have made it easier for groups to keep communication lines open.
For many meetings, video conferencing is the perfect solution for saving the business resources like time, money and energy involved in travel. Employees can now reallocate those resources into more profitable tasks, like focusing on closing sales leads instead of booking flights and hotels.
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Businesses will adopt more flexible tools for communication
In the span of just a few weeks, we’ve seen our world shift from in-person meetings to relying on online and long-distance communication tools. Our society is in the midst of a communication revolution and businesses must be ready to reinvent themselves.
As we recover from the effects of the social-distancing mandates, businesses will see the benefits of adopting digital tools into their workforce and lean more heavily on technology that encourages remote employment.
Tools like video conferencing, screen sharing and file sharing will be imperative to the success of modern businesses. These companies will depend on these tools to keep businesses operating efficiently and keep employees at their happiest.
There are a handful of other things that the stay-at-home mandates have highlighted, like the positive effect of less commuting has had on the environment and how resilient communities can be when we stick together.
If you want to get ahead of the curve, you’ll want to adopt flexible digital tools and a work-from-home policy into your business quickly.