COVID has changed societies in many ways – will it permanently change the global workforce?

In 2020 companies around the world moved their workforce to work remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Sending employees to work from home, providing them with laptops and other remote working technology tools seemed at the time a short term matter, with staff expected to return to the offices in a couple of weeks or so.

The reality proved to be completely different, and a large portion of the global workforce moved to remote-work for a long period of time, on a scale never seen before. While it is said COVID has accelerated business digital transformation with new tools / systems and also better staff engagement with previously existing technology solutions, a HP research has found 79% of office workers felt enormously unprepared to navigate the new reality of working remotely.

The technology change acceleration created a disruption of the workforce with companies quickly embracing some technologies in their early development stage (e.g. Artificial Intelligence – AI, Machine Learning – ML, Robotic Process Automation – RPA, etc.), leaving workers starting to wonder the implications in their current and future relevance in the workplace, of such technologies roll out.

A HP’s Workforce Evolution Study, has found about one in three employees invested themselves in re-skilling, committed to purchase new home office supplies and technologies, with some decided about moving to a more successful and pleasant career as entrepreneurs.

Previously, white-collar workers, with college degrees, were spared and were not concerned about potential impacts of automation in their jobs. This seems to have changed – advances in AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ML (Machine Learning), accelerated by the pandemic, led to the development of algorithms that can outperform these workers at certain parts of their jobs. Eight in ten corporate executives responding to a 2020 Deloitte survey confirmed they had already implemented some form of RPA (Robotic Process Automation) to streamline business processes and operations, while 16% of the respondents planned to do it in the next three years.

While the rate of job creation in a global scale continues higher than the rate of job destruction, the skill sets required from workers are quickly changing, and an urgent need to reskill the workforce is required. Workers must gain new digital skills, engage in further training as businesses invest in new technologies and workstyles to remain profitable and relevant in the global market.

Industries that were already struggling to digitally transform pre-pandemic (retail, hospitality and travel) are facing increased difficulties, and industries built around digitally driven and human-focused roles (data analysis, human resources and the green economy) are poised for resilience, according to the World Economic Forum’s “The Future of Jobs Report 2020”.

While a HP research shows 50% of small and mid-sized employers are looking to their workforce to help define innovation strategies, the climate of job insecurity is pushing a large portion of employees to invest to re-train themselves with the skills needed to succeed in current and future roles.

Flexible work arrangements – work from home, from anywhere, anytime – despite the recognised new and existing challenges, offer a flexibility enabling to hire across greater demographics — geographically and racially — and create more opportunity for segments of the workforce to rise to senior leadership, bringing more inclusion and equity to the workplace. This can help organisations to address previous existing systemic inequities, exacerbated by the pandemic and global recession.

Organisations are finding their workforce increasingly depends on external workers. A MIT SMR-Deloitte survey on the future of the workforce finds that most managers consider employees and external workers — including contractors, service providers, app developers, and gig workers — who create value to the enterprise, to be part of their workforce.

This flexible workforce leads to organisations competing for talent and the fact employees have experienced through the pandemic the reality that a nine to five, working in an office space is not necessarily a must. Employers need to adapt employees' new demands and expectations, such as the flexibility to work from anywhere, anytime, to have an improved work-life balance which were proved through the pandemic as something to be achievable.

The need to manage a diverse group of internal and external workers, led some executives to come with the idea of a workforce ecosystem, defined as “a structure focused on value creation for an organization that consists of complementarities and interdependencies. This structure encompasses actors, from within the organisation and beyond, working to pursue both individual and collective goals". Refer to MIT SMR-Deloitte survey “Workforce Ecosystems – A New Strategic Approach to the Future of Work, a multi-year MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte research collaboration in the future of the workforce.