Will Work Be Better After COVID-19?

“It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass…”

-Samwise Gamgee (video reference for the quote that I don’t own the rights to RIGHT HERE)

It’s no secret that the COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed the ways that many businesses complete their work. That includes internal and external processes and change for the better and the worse. Similar shifts in work have happened in the past after nationwide events like the Great Depression of the 1930s or the Great Recession of 2008-2009. When work fundamentally changes, it also means that it needs to be supported differently. At best, this can be overwhelming and challenging to do especially in a short amount of time. At its worst it has closed businesses and provided the U.S. with the worst unemployment situation since the great depression.

The changes people are now making are meant to adapt to the current situation, but I’ve seen some things that I hope are here to stay in the world of work. I think that the adversity we face now could lead to some beneficial shifts. I devote this post to outlining those thoughts here. Plus, I had to take the chance to quote my favorite Lord of the Rings character. Here is a summary of my wishes (in the order that they appear):

Wish 1: Working Environment and/or Salaries Improve for Teachers and Nurses

After the Great Recession of 2008-2009, one of the effects was that many states cut education budgets. One large adjustment that people had to make this time around was that parents had to do home schooling with their kids, sometimes without the help of the school district’s resources. Parents across the nation took the reins on their kids’ education and have had a first-hand look at the successes and challenges of doing so. Having had to do this myself for a short time with one child, it is no easy task. To try and do that for anywhere from 15 to 25 students (maybe more in some cases) would be a monumental task.

Nurses have long been viewed as underpaid. If their value is not seen now, I’m not sure what else could be done to persuade people otherwise. They have been willing to take on so many difficult tasks and occupational stressors in order to help their respective communities get healthy again. Nurses have always been on the proverbial “front line” of the medical field. However, their efforts this time around were especially meaningful since it put them at such great risk and could only be done by them. I don’t know if there has been another period of time during my life when nurses have had to take on so much this widely across their profession.

There are several others than have positively contributed in big ways to handling this crisis. My case for these two specifically is that they have long been valued emotionally by society but in many cases still perform their jobs with fewer resources, longer schedules, understaffed, and difficult organizational climates that make the job harder to do. I hope that school districts, health care systems, and hospitals make some permanent changes to boost support for these occupations. Salary may not be the desired solution in some cases. In fact, the external reward can sometimes wipe out the internal motivation that drives teachers and nurses to do the great job that they do. However…

What if more teachers received the needed resources for their classes from the school districts instead of buying them on their own? What if nurses had better benefits to account for the occupational hazards they often face? What if nurses had better facilities for taking breaks during long shifts? What if schools had a budget to acquire newer technology and training to incorporate it into their classes quicker? I’m sure that teachers and nurses could come up with hundreds of even better ways that their organization could support them. Salary could be one of those improvements, but if not there are still a lot of other ways to improve work for nurses and teachers. These are the types of actions that lead to more committed and higher performing employees.

Wish 2: Employers Get Creative with Work Schedules

The conditions surrounding shelter-in-place and social distancing forced everyone to consider how scheduling could be more accommodating for employees across the nation and the world. People have had to be flexible about what could be done without being in the office and mindful of the non-work considerations of coworkers. While this is often done at a cursory level, the degree and intensity with which it has been examined in the past few months is something that I hope continues to garner attention and focus.

Working from home is one thing and a great option for many. However, I want to go beyond remote work as well. What about shorter work days? What about a shorter work week? These would put the focus more squarely on employee well-being and emphasize the increasingly knowledge- and creativity-based economy. The topic has gained attention over the years in both academia and popular press articles. Although there are definitely companies out there trying some of these alternate schedules (e.g., Nike moves to a 4-day week during summer months, Twitter just announced a permanent work from home option), it is still the exception, not the rule.

The challenge in my opinion is doing all of this without contributing to the feeling that we need to fill our schedule with more activities instead of prioritizing and being more efficient with the time that we already have. If these changes resulted in working 4, 16 hours days, I’m not sure that we will have accomplished much. There is a whole slew of other things that would need to change along with it in order to make it happen, and those would be the details that need to worked out by each organization. But I hope that those discussions happen and lead to positive changes.

Wish 3: Get Back to Basics of Work Processes

With the various public health policies, organizations found themselves revamping work processes across the board. Operational processes were streamlined to accommodate decreased staff. Interpersonal processes were a greater focus as many began to work remotely. The benefit of all that was a lot of discussion about things like the following:

I’m hopeful that these questions and considerations continue to be on our minds. There are many posts, articles, and blogs on these kinds of topics specific to COVID-19 issues. For example, I saw an article on the Society of Industrial-Organizational Psychology’s website (or SIOP, a group of professionals that scientifically study the workplace) about remote work leadership (article is here: Tips on Leading From Home). What has struck me about this and all of the resources I have seen is that they are generally good practices to adopt, pandemic or not.

Is communication only important when we are talking about crisis situations? Of course not. Are clear performance expectations really only of concern when we have to react to a worldwide pandemic? Definitely not. Are clear routines any less helpful now than they were last October? I think you get the idea. I am not trying to be critical of the resources themselves. But it begs the question: why do we need to be told about these things right now?

Sometimes in the flow of work and the routine of our respective business lines, there is little time to consider things like these topics. As a result, many of us either never quite get a handle of these basic ideas of project and team management or we forget them because there are so many immediate demands. These are important for the functioning of a team though, and this transition time has given us a chance to re-focus ourselves on those basic principles. My desire is that we continue to take time to reflect on those basics and improve in them.

Wish 4: Greater Investment in Cyber Security

Cyber security makes the lives of everyone easier. During a time when we are relying on digital media to facilitate work more than ever, I hope that cyber security takes a big jump. This isn’t because I think cyber security is terrible right now. But I do know that there are ever present threats to our personal information and digitized records. Many organizations who have moved to more virtual means of communicating have to protect their proprietary information and employee records. Many companies have looked to digital products and services even digital doctors and therapist appointments. More so than ever, the internet is the basis for all work processes.

For businesses (small and big companies alike), I think that great cyber security would allow for the free market to work better for everyone. It could help smaller businesses develop quicker and open up the market to even more advancement on new capabilities of internet-based products and services. On the consumer side, the acceptance and use of those products and services will come quicker with improved cyber security. Not to mention that voting security has become a hot button issue that could use this kind of support as well.

Wish 5: Work Takes a Back Seat to Social Relationships

Work can easily take over your time and attention. In fact, one common complaint with working from home is the difficulty in setting boundaries between work and life demands, since sometimes remote work turns into working 24-7. Although the pandemic has turned a lot of people into remote workers, many are still focusing on the social connection to others and are going to great lengths to do so.

We have found ways to be cohesive and socially interactive during times of social distancing. People have done happy hours, group lunches, play dates, live concerts, Netflix watch parties, celebrations of big life events, and late-night TV production all through virtual means. Our family life has become a bigger focus during these times with parents having to take over more education duties and everyone being home more.

Many work teams are deliberately making efforts to communicate more frequently through various means to make sure that everyone is on the same page and is doing well. All those feel good stories we have been seeing showed the lengths that people are going through to be with each other in some way. I hope that we can continue to try and do that for each other, worldwide pandemic or not.

It’s not that work is being neglected either. The connection to others is becoming a bigger priority for everyone though and hopefully that means that work won’t dominate our attention and energy to the degree that it has in the past.

Wish 6: We Continue to Seek Out the Positive

I once had a family friend tell me that thoughts become words, words become action, action becomes habit, habit becomes character, and character is who we are. It starts with our thoughts though. It is easy to find and dwell on the negative news and aspects of life, especially when the entire world is facing a pandemic. If we continue seeing and thinking of the negative, then that will eventually become a part of our character and who we are.

One of the great things that has happened since so many of the stay at home orders have been issued is that people made deliberate efforts to see the positive. In doing so, people have shown more gratitude and seek to lift others in greater degree. In the midst of infection reports, death tolls, businesses closing, and job losses, we have had people virtually sharing how others have served their neighbors, created a sense of community from a distance, and giving of themselves freely (see John Krasinski’s Some Good News on YouTube for examples).

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues on and reports show a very possible surge of cases coming in the fall of 2020, I hope that we all continue to look for the positive and try our best to show gratitude for others at work. Positivity in the midst of adversity is one of the ways we can cope with stressful situations. Things often don’t go well at work and an enduring positive attitude can help us thrive in those moments.

Final Thoughts

The pandemic has given us some legitimate challenges to face as families, communities, and countries across the world. Within adversity, there is also opportunity that would not otherwise be there. We’ve all had to stop and think through everything that we do to accommodate our new reality. We’ve had to slow down and look at our lives in a different light.

To me the best work solutions are always a delicate balance between the tasks and structure of work and the consideration for people. There are opportunities to improve on both of those concepts right now if we are willing to invest in them. These are not the only possibilities for benefits post-COVID19, but they are the ones I hope for the most.

Thanks for reading!

-Brandon
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