A lot has changed over the last year, no more so than
employment within society. All of retail, for example, had to reinvent
themselves with new measures and practice. But what’s next for employment after
COVID-19?
Working From Home
Easily one of the quickest changes we’ve seen applied to
employees working condition, has been the introduction of more remote working.
Many offices had to close for almost an entire year, but the work didn’t stop.
Instead, what we saw were businesses scrambling to set up
working conditions and software for employees out of the office. This meant
ensuring all employees had access to a desktop/laptop and working internet to
keep working.
This led to the rise of video call applications, such as
Zoom, to help teams get their meetings done effectively, assuming people
weren’t accidentally muting themselves.
In some cases, employees were given a small bursary to get
office materials in that they would need to get work done. In some cases,
towards the end of the year, some businesses make the drastic decision to close
down their offices to permanently work from home.
This is only possible for a select number of businesses,
mainly offices, of course. This decision was made as it was realised that the
same amount of work was still getting done, saving costs of office space. For
workers, they were able to save on transport costs and food costs, giving them
more incentive to work.
HR Challenges
Of course, the last year or so has proved to be a challenge
for workforces across the globe. As such, HR departments have had to innovate
and evolve with the times.
One of the ways they have achieved this, is by being more
open to the use of an outplacement service. Outplacement
support allows employees to be moved onto new lines of work if they’ve had
to leave their work, which happened a lot when COVID-19 hit.
With unforeseen circumstances such as this, it’s useful to
have a service that can help everyone move forward as seamless as possible.
This is not only ethically a good move, but it will help protect business
interests further down the line.
Technological Advancements
As well as seeing more workers work from home, we will
inevitably see more technology within all industries. That doesn’t necessarily
mean we will see lots of manual work be replaced by robotic technology.
Instead, what we will most likely see, is more artificial intelligence within
businesses, helping to improve productivity.
Artificial
intelligence will be more and more integrated into workplaces in the near
future. Already, we have seen AI takeover a lot of customer service roles.
These web chat bots, send automated messages to customers, responding to
buzzwords and problems to either suggest fixes, or get them sent to the right
human department.
Some AI will be used to help make better predictions, as
they can analyse and diagnose much better in an informed manner. This will help
boost HR teams, in terms of making decisions easier and quicker too.
It’s also quite likely that the next generation of workers
will be more inclined to work with newer technology too. Much like the
generation before them, they will have different ways to want to work.
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