What Will Work Life Look Like Post Pandemic?

The Covid-19 pandemic has gotten most of us used to working from home. As many countries are moving towards easing the lockdown in place to open up the economy, companies are soon going to resume working from offices.

But the question is, will it be the same?

How will our work life change after coronavirus?

With the absence of vaccine, shifting into new workplaces will require massive changes of both short-term fixes and long term arrangements. Epidemiologists suggest that short-term fixes such as having less than 100% workers in the office space at a time and always sanitizing every corner to prevent spread of virus. Longer term arrangements that center around hygiene, health and safety must be in place until vaccines can be availed. It can mean that companies have to restructure their workplace designs where desks will be placed at a distance and facing away from each other, meeting room sitting arrangements have to be dispersed, winding off space or social activities may have to be withdrawn all together.

Apart from these indefinite physical and structural changes, corporate culture will inevitably change as well. Throughout the last decade, corporate culture has cultivated the idea of “togetherness” and “collaboration” to climb the ladders of both business and employee growth.

Now we are forced to change the focus.

Corporate cultures that would give priority to the employees’ health and welfare would thrive more in this post pandemic world. HR managers who take utmost precautions to ensure minimal chances of contraction of the coronavirus for their employees would be lauded as the hero in a paradigm shift corporate arena.

So, how can we cope with such major changes in our work life?

While pessimists among us like to picture the post pandemic Covid world as straight out of a dystopian movie climaxing at an apocalypse; the more optimistic ones imagine a positive outcome in the work cultures. We, as realists, would prefer to hover somewhere in between as both pros and cons would exist in the post pandemic offices.

It is inevitable that employee morale would have to survive the biggest blow due to changing corporate culture and boosting employee productivity & motivations would claim the number 1 spot in a list of challenges for the human resources department.

Engage in virtual team building

Investing in sound corporate culture translates to a loyal and trusted workforce, that in turn reduces costs associated with high turnover. In a post pandemic work life, employees might feel alienated as they engage in remote work practices. HR managers have to implement activities to help in online team building even if employees are deprived of the opportunity for face to face connection.

Virtual team building is one of the solutions you can opt for to have a positive impact on you and your team during this period. With Jambar Virtual, virtual team building is just a click away. Their program such as exclusive online corporate training, online team building activities and workshops help you to boost employee morale and improve productivity.

Reinforce your team’s learnings

Over the past few months, your team had to go through a plethora of dynamic shifts, ranging from how the projects were carried out remotely to how seamless communication flows were maintained even in this pandemic situation. Your team deserves a round of applause for being agile, resilient and coming out as a winner; these attributes have to be nurtured in your team for future endeavours and reinforced in their learnings.

Smart businesses will hold on to the valuable traits gained in future, and cultivate virtual connections by encouraging cross functional collaboration, breaking away from the silo work culture.

Practice more internal communication

Many companies have maintained more frequent virtual communication to get work done, even more frequent than they would have under normal circumstances. As a result, productivity and efficiency might have increased as less time was wasted in hierarchical structures. Striving to maintain more internal communication would not only result in better work delivered, a boost in employee motivation would be visible as team bonding improves and employees feel more valued.