Page 10 - BusinessWest March 3, 2021

Work After the Pandemic
Will Employers or Workers Have the Proverbial Upper Hand?
IBy John Graham
t’s been a year now since we came under
the relentless domination of the corona-
virus. After all this time, the picture isn’t pleasant. The end is uncertain, and the impli- cations for the future are far from clear.
McKinsey reports that “75% of employees in the United States and close to a third in the Asia- Pacific region report symptoms of burnout. Euro- pean nations are reporting increasing levels of pandemic fatigue in their populations. The num- ber of those who rate their mental health as ‘very poor’ is more than three times higher than before the crisis, and mental-health issues are still likely to rise.” In spite of their severity, such figures should get our attention, but do they?
Perhaps the most dangerous part of the coro- navirus is its divisiveness. More often than not, outside attacks — wars, famines, and natural disasters — bring us together to slay the dragon. But the pandemic has driven us further apart. Who would have thought life could take such a painful turn?
Overnight, workers were told to leave their jobs and work from home. Not only did they do it, they liked it. Now, many are ready to refuse to go back to claustrophobic cubicles or vacu- ous open spaces where they lacked privacy. To express their pleasure at working from home, they remodeled their bedrooms, kitchens, and
One Year Later
Continued from page 9 John- son: One
of the things I’ve been big on over the past decade is preparing students for the future of work and making sure they had the essential skills that could not be replicated by robots. This pandemic has put us in a place where we, as employers, with our employees, have to do the same thing. I don’t think it’s an either/or when it comes to Zoom or face to face. The question is, ‘how do we use that technology to complement our ability be more efficient in the workplace?’ On college and uni- versity campuses, we need to be face to face and on the ground, but I can now give my employ-
ees some flexibility; it’s not 8 to 5. If they have a soccer game or child care doesn’t show up that day, we’ve shown that that we can get work done with people working from home. As managers, we have to teach people how to work with their teams and their staffs to give them that work-life balance. Overall, I think the pandemic has merely accelerated what was inevitable anyhow.
Rymarski: I agree with the others when they say that synergy, flow, and the social and cultural aspects are missing when people don’t come to the office. I think about the new employees who came on board just before the pandemic, and not having them in the office and having them shad- owing someone every single day for a week or two to learn what needs to be done. I think that has impacted them. At the same time, this pandemic has, indeed, accelerated a process that was inevi- table. I think the challenge is handling all this; we’ve basically condensed down what we need to do to a very short time, and employers are strug- gling to manage the expectations of every person.
basements; upgraded their internet connection; purchased all sorts of digital devices and office equipment; and didn’t miss a beat.
counter-intuitive, story. But what does it mean to all of us who must live it? Literally, what in the world is going on? Even more to the point, what’s the message about the future — our future? Here
They’re choosy, too. “You want me in the office? I don’t think so.” Some moved to Boise or some other place in the middle
of nowhere that welcomed them with
open arms and lower living costs. They donned their sweats, popped open a lap- top, jumped on virtual meetings, adjusted the lighting, turned on a monitor or two, and went to work in their new, $999 office chair, or decided to stay in bed and make it their office that day. To the utter surprise to everyone, productivity went up.
“Overnight, workers were told to leave their jobs and work from home. Not only did they do it, they liked it. Now, many are ready to refuse to go back to claustrophobic cubicles or vacuous open spaces where they lacked privacy.”
That’s just the first chapter. The McK-
insey report also notes that “there is a
veritable flood of new small businesses. In
the third quarter of 2020 alone, there were more than 1.5 million new-business applications in the United States — almost double the figure for the same period in 2019.” That’s not all. The fourth quarter found Apple ripe for success with the highest revenue in its history — and the com- pany wasn’t alone.
Four Lessons
All this adds up to an amazing, but totally
BusinessWest: From what’s been said so far,
it seems that the pandemic has brought the issue of work/life balance into the forefront as perhaps never before. Talk about if and how this crisis has provided more impetus for employers to help their employees with this challenge and cope in general.
Cooper: The need to be compassionate and caring for your employees
has never been higher. These
employees are dealing with
losses — children that they haven’t seen, aging parents that they can’t see ... the human toll is very high.
are four thoughts about that.
The genie is out of the bottle. It’s finally
happened. To put it another way, like no other phenomenon in modern history (perhaps in
all of history), the pandemic released a level of momentum sufficient to turn the world and everything in it upside down in an instant. It may
also be the cata-
lyst that changes Upper Hand everything, from Continued on page 47
looks like, and what is the path forward.
Stelzer: What I think is really important going forward in the work/life balance issue is not only their own personal situations, but how do you
get people to understand that they don’t need to work 14 hours a day at home? A lot of people dove into their work because they could. I’ve talked with a lot of tenant companies, service providers,
“The one thing that we all have in common is that our workforce is our most precious asset; it’s what makes us able to do the things we do. And these people are hurting right now.”
attorneys, CPAs, whatever, and they’re all work- ing longer hours than they ever were before. This is something we have to keep on the radar mov- ing forward; if you’re going to remain in a quasi- remote-work environment, how do you find bal- anceandwork9to5?(Or9to7—noonereally works 9 to 5.) How do you shut it off?
Bitsoli: The one thing that we all have in com- mon is that our workforce is our most precious asset; it’s what makes us able to do the things we
One Year Later
Continued on page 11
Johnson: I would agree
with that wholeheartedly.
We talk about work/life bal-
ance, and we’ve been talking
about it for a long time. One
of the things we’ve learned is
that, before, managers would have said, ‘you can’t have that work/life balance; you have to be here all the time when you’re supposed to be here.’ But when we had to flip on a dime and make this thing work, it’s amazing how resilient we really are. The human toll that this is taking on people is huge, and we have to give our employees some time to breathe when this is all said and done.
I know eight people who have died since last March. When I said that on a Zoom call, people started tearing up, because they’ve had those same kinds of experiences and no way to grieve. Part of this equation is that we have to figure out in our organization what that grieving process
DEBORAH BITSOLI
10 MARCH 3, 2021
FEATURE
BusinessWest