Coronavirus and the future of work

Coronavirus has had a significant global impact on our lives and will continue to do so for years to come. At the same time as forcing us to focus on personal issues close to home, coronavirus has also led to us re-imagining our thoughts, ideas and hopes for the future. No more so than in relation to the future of work.

Coronavirus has accelerated future of work trends, shining a spotlight on the workplace and requiring organisations to take decisions at speed that many might have assumed would take years to implement. The Harvard Business Review describes the global coronavirus pandemic as the “most significant social experiment of the future of work in action” whilst Deloitte characterises coronavirus as “a time machine to the future”.

In this article, we bring together thinking from a wide range of experts and look at nine ways coronavirus might change the world of work.

1. CORONAVIRUS AND REMOTE WORKING

As coronavirus caused many workplaces to go remote, employers have had to grapple with a host of logistical challenges. Coronavirus exposed weaknesses such as inadequate technology, unreliable Wi-Fi, and weak client confidentiality policies, alongside individual challenges faced by many employees in managing work and home schooling and other caring responsibilities at the same time.

The pandemic has highlighted a stark divide between people whose work can be done from home, and those whose work cannot. A further division has opened between those who can work easily from home and those who should be able to, but whose circumstances prevent it due to lack of space, childcare responsibilities or other distractions. 

Coronavirus has created a homeworking revolution

The latest ONS figures show that in the 7 days (up to 14 June) 49% of workers reported working from home at some point. With more and more workers getting the chance to experience long-term homeworking, surveys are showing huge numbers have developed a preference for it. Buffer & AngelList’s 2020 State of Remote Report 2020 of over 3,500 workers, found that 98% would like to work remotely, for at least some of the time for the rest of their career and 97% would recommend remote working to others.

Problems with homeworking during coronavirus lockdown

Homeworking does not come without its challenges. That same survey into working attitudes during coronavirus lockdown also found that 20% cite difficulty with communication and collaboration as their biggest struggle with homeworking, whilst another 20% cited loneliness. However, the top issue was switching off from work because of the increasingly blurred lines between work and personal life that exist when your home is your workplace. Eurofound and the International Labour office reported that a higher proportion of regular homeworkers (42%) reported poor sleep compared to only 29% of those who worked at their employer’s premises.

It isn’t just employees with concerns. Surveys have found 82% of managers are concerned about reduced employee productivity and reduced employee focus. Despite this, 71% of UK businesses plan to adopt more flexible and agile working practices post coronavirus lockdown. It looks as the shift to remote working for many employees could be here to stay.

2. CORONAVIRUS AND WORKPLACE PATERNALISM

With the UK government advising that anyone who can work from home should continue to do so in order to reduce the spread of coronavirus, there is increasing focus on the role employers should play in support staff during this crisis.

What is paternalism?

Employer paternalism is traditionally associated with the days of a non-existent welfare state and employers who stepped in to look after their workforce as a result. In more recent times, it is associated with final salary benefit schemes and a ‘job for life’. These questions thrown up by coronavirus, are a reminder of eras gone by where employer paternalism was at an all-time high.

Examples of employer paternalism

The height of employer paternalism is often referred to as the Cadbury’s village of Bourneville in the 1890’s. Cadbury even built a school for the village children and factory employees were members of pioneering pension schemes, joint works committees and received medical treatment.

The modern-day equivalent is normally found in the form of a company’s benefits package. The Future of Work Hub has previously written about corporate paternalism and the development of progressive benefits packages.  

Will coronavirus increase employer paternalism?

The job retention scheme and self-employed income support scheme are unprecedented response packages from the government to lessen the financial impact of the crisis on both business and individuals. It remains to be seen what longer-term role might emerge for employers to support their workforce and wider communities.  However, there has already been a notable shift in how organisations are ramping up support for employee mental health considering current circumstances, including monthly paid ‘mental health’ days and increasing parental leave entitlements beyond statutory minimum entitlements. Whether this is a development of pre-existing trends, and how far coronavirus will make an impact on these trends, remains to be seen. In these challenging times, many employers will find it difficult to make improvements to benefit packages in the immediate term.

3. WORKING TIME

A lot of ink has been used discussing what work-life balance should and could look like. Commentators seem to be split over whether the coronavirus pandemic will result in positive or negative changes to the way we balance our work and home lives.

Work-life balance: killed by coronavirus?

In today’s coronavirus pandemic world, with employees’ homes now becoming their place of work as well as their escape from it, the previously blurred lines between work and home have become invisible. With enforced home working looking likely for the longer term, the opportunities for employees to stay logged on for longer are only increasing. Factor in the looming recession and consequent redundancies, those employees grateful for a job or juggling childcare responsibilities are likely to be working late into the long lockdown evenings.

Remote working, overwork and coronavirus

Data from NordVPN in April found that employees working from home were logging extra hours every day, ranging from an additional two hours in the UK to three in the US. Another VPN provider has seen usage spikes from midnight to 3am that weren’t seen pre-coronavirus. A global lockdown has resulted in individuals (and their managers in some cases) feeling as if they have no excuse not to be present and online working productively. Glint People Science at LinkedIn has stated that the biggest emerging trend in terms of employee well-being is burnout. From March to April, employee comments regarding burnout doubled increasing to 5.4%.

The blurring of lines between personal and work lives is something that isn’t going to go away anytime soon, and employers will need to consider how best to look after employee mental health if remote working is here to stay. There’s already evidence to support that this is happening, with LinkedIn noting that over 10 times as many people watched mindfulness and stress management courses in April compared to February.

Coronavirus could solve productivity problem

For those still concerned about how individuals can work around children and the over-flowing laundry basket, Adam Grant, an organisational psychologist, in an interview with the World Economic Forum last month predicts that employers will embrace the flexibility of staff working from home and having virtual teams. This, coupled with the increased productivity from a lack of commute into the office, could bring real benefits in the long term.

4. CORONAVIRUS : THE FUTURE OF THE OFFICE

There has long been a divide between London and the regional cities with big businesses having a regional arm with cost saving measures as one factor. One trend that has dominated pre-coronavirus future of work discussions has always been office space and location amongst premium property prices. 

Post coronavirus and contrast lines will have moved between office and home work. Many office-based employers’ ‘return to work’ plans include a divide between the small amount of people who are required to be in the office and those who can continue to work from home.

The Harvard Business Review discusses that having a remote workforce also allows employers the opportunity to re-examine what and how work is performed. By deconstructing jobs into ‘component tasks’, it allows employers to examine which tasks can be continued to be performed by those operating remotely as opposed to those needed on-site. Employers were already starting to question the amount of square footage required and a remote workforce in the context of a recession will no doubt accelerate this trend. 

No one can deny that the coronavirus pandemic has got everyone thinking about what the point of the office is or was in the first place. Neil Usher comments in his blog “What’s this for…? The office, that is” that the tough question we need to ask ourselves is what is the office for, pointing out that “…today, we have almost no need at all to attend a workplace for the assets within. Everything is provided in a modern office is available in the home or locally.”

Coronavirus: the end of the office?

Given returns to workplaces are currently shrouded in health and safety risk assessments and social distancing rules, many employers are seeing just how inadequate the spaces are in terms of implementing those plans. Who wants to take a lift to the 10th floor anymore? James Gorman, Morgan Stanley CEO told Bloomberg that coronavirus has proved that the bank could work with ‘no footprint’ and predicted that in the future the bank will have “much less real estate”.

As coronavirus causes a reduction in businesses occupying real estate, this will have significant ramifications both for individuals and businesses. As a worker’s address and location become less relevant, so too does their choice of where to live having an impact on property prices everywhere. In turn, those businesses reliant on lunchtime and peak commuter footfall may well see reduced demand in future. 

Just before you apply to feature on ‘Escape to the Country’ however, Raconteur’s Alex Wilson cautions that from looking at what has happened to workers in China “physical workspaces are unlikely to become a thing of the past.” Many workers do not have access to the overlooked comforts of an office and “working away from the office full time also increases the risk of loneliness and other mental health issues”. 

5. CORONAVIRUS , TECHNOLOGY & DATA PRIVACY

Technology is always at the forefront of any future of work conversation. Never more so than now, in conversations about the “new normal” created by coronavirus. We can expect that companies will be far more likely to invest in state of the art technology to support remote working where possible and far less in premium office space. As Tech analyst Ben Evans states “we’re all online now, and just as importantly, we’re all willing to use this for any part of our lives…today, anyone will do anything online.”

Given the social distancing requirements look likely to stay for some time, it is technology and automation that will have to step in to minimise human contact, or as Mckinsey’s Sneader refers to – “the rise of the contact-free economy”.

Coronavirus trumps data privacy?

With increasing reliance and use of technology, data privacy concerns have been heightened since the implementation of the GDPR amid an increasing awareness of digital footprints and data subject rights. However, it seems that in the context of tackling the global coronavirus pandemic, data privacy concerns may be taking a back seat.

As the government continues to grapple with the rolling out a nationwide coronavirus ‘tracker’ app, such an idea would have been given short shrift at the beginning of 2020, compared to the widespread disappointment at the current slow pace of any rollout.  Once implemented, millions will need to download the government app and surrender vast amounts of their health and location data under the guise of a ‘civic duty’.  In the renewed focus of our role as citizens to help society, just as we have given up our daily freedoms and living to ‘stay home, protect the NHS and save lives’ in order to tackle coronavirus, might this translate to a change in attitudes to data privacy?

Change is afoot in the workplace too with some employers rolling out employee contact tracing devices, thermal testing on entry to the workplace and requiring employees to share confidential health data. Rather than cynicism and employees checking the privacy policy wording, Ben Favaro, a senior associate in Lewis Silkin’s data privacy team comments that “employees are trustingly trading privacy norms in return for their safety and the ability to work remotely.”

What of the future? Mckinsey note that there may be some lasting change in consumer values towards physical distance, health and privacy if it can be shown that the mass sharing of personal data during the crisis helped save lives.

6. CORONAVIRUS AND INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TRAVEL

“To travel is to live” said Hans Christian Anderson.  But travelling has fallen to the bottom of most people’s wish lists at the moment. 

Many commentators envisage that changes to travel will be a lasting legacy of coronavirus. Capita and Cranfield both predict that business international travel may never recover to pre-coronavirus pandemic levels – particularly for short trips - as companies learn to make do with virtual meetings. As better technology is adopted for meetings and collaboration and given the growing concerns over the environmental ethics of air travel, coronavirus might result in a ‘tipping point’ leading to ‘long term and significant change’.

Closer to home, the daily commute for many employees has already changed beyond recognition – notably by its absence. Looking to beyond the current coronavirus crisis, employers should certainly expect to be dealing with an increased number of flexible working requests from employees who have found working from home to be an enjoyable experience. With coronavirus providing a trial working from home role for many staff, there are bound to be many who have a preference not to return to the daily rat race. Deloitte’s Future of the City survey found 70% of City of London financial services employees found home working a positive experience with the main reason cited as the absence of a commute. 

Conference stigma: mass gatherings after coronavirus

Cast your mind back to the early days of the pandemic in February where global media attention was focused on reporting of new confirmed infections. One of the first so-called ‘super-spreaders’ of coronavirus that attracted significant attention had caught the virus at a Singapore company conference before unknowingly infecting another 11 people.

A month later, O’Reilly Media shocked the events industry by announcing they were closing their in-person events business stating “…we believe the stage is set for a new normal moving forward when it comes to in-person events”. The events industry has been and will continue to be severely affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Conferences take months, if not years, of planning and plans cannot be made until it becomes safe to hold such events and who knows when that will happen? Without business conferences, international travel could become a thing of the past. Rafat Ali, owner of Skift, a media company for the travel industry, in conversation with Joshua Benton commented “if we ever give in to the idea that face to face events will be over, then we should also give up on the idea that people will travel again.”

7. CORONAVIRUS AND GENDER EQUALITY

The effect of coronavirus on women has been marked but could permanently shift the dynamic.

How coronavirus lockdown might reveal opportunities for women

With coronavirus lockdown restrictions requiring everyone to work from home if possible, many employers have been forced to get to grips with homeworking. One of the biggest features in many online female career support groups has been the cries of ‘I told you so’ from women who were turned down for flexible working requests or requests to work from home pre-coronavirus. Some employers have refused such requests for fear of creating a precedent or refusing to understand how such a pattern might work for their business. 

A new normal of working from home may result in the opening of the jobs market to those who have struggled previously for personal reasons such as childcare or disabilities.  Tracy Bower, writing for Forbes points out that the traditional approach to work has not always been as welcoming to those with different capabilities – be it physically, mentally or socially. Allowing people to work from home has ‘made way’ for a more diverse workforce up ahead. 

Negative impact of coronavirus, lockdown and furlough on women

Whilst this culture change might boost long-term opportunities for women, the shorter-term could be more difficult. Women make up a bigger proportion of the workforce in particular industries which have been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. A Fawcett Society survey found that 33% of women reported their workplace had been closed compared to 25% of men. Statistics from the US Bureau of Labour statistics show that 2.5million jobs were lost in the health and education sector, with women making up 74.8% of this sector’s employees.  With a reported 42% of employers considering redundancies once the furlough scheme ends, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this will hit women hard. A report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the UCL Institute of Education has revealed some truly worrying figures such as mothers being 47% more likely to have permanently lost their job or quit and 14% more likely to have been furloughed. The report’s conclusions were that mothers were 9% less likely to still be in paid work than fathers given the coronavirus pandemic, leading to serious consequences for the future of the economy and the gender pay gap.

8. CORONAVIRUS AND WORKPLACE CULTURE

Even the big technology companies recognise that remote working requires a culture change and that workers will miss their face to face social interactions. Microsoft’s ‘tips for remote working’ suggest creating ‘virtual water cooler opportunities’ to help teams catch up with each other or daily check ins over virtual coffees.

A turning point in corporate culture

As coronavirus forces companies out of office space and into isolated home offices, they are battling with how to re-create the office chatter and the social connection that a trip into the office provides. Whilst many employees are currently enjoying working from home, the answer may well be different a year from now when it has had time to become the ‘new normal’. Raconteur comment that companies will need to grapple with the question of the purpose of the office in a new era where it may only be used for part of the week. Claire Stephens, Strategy Director for Greater China at Gensler, a design and architecture firm believes offices will exist “as a place to connect with company culture and collaborate….”.

With the change in how and where work is carried out, many organisations are also noting the flexibility and freedom (in some cases) for employees to decide when and where to do their work, freed from the constraints of a commute and office hours.

Adam Grant argues that leaders can take the opportunity to give employees more control over the work and hopefully discover they can trust them to manage their own schedules.

Presenteeism after coronavirus

Coronavirus should have put paid to the idea that the way to advance is to live in the office. Instead presenteeism has shifted to virtual presenteeism and encompassing more workers than before. A Canada Life survey showed that 46% of remote lockdown workers felt more pressure to be present for their employer with 35% saying they had continued working despite being unwell. It will be important for employers to revisit workplace culture and consider how best to support well-being for those who continue to work predominately at home.

Coronavirus and job retention?

Given the impending recession and concerns about redundancy, some employers may not be focusing on workforce retention. However, research consistently shows the positive benefits which arise from employees who report close connections with colleagues. Gallup report that women who strongly agree that they have a ‘work best friend’ are less likely to be actively looking or watching for job opportunities as well as improving engagement and performance. In the new normal remote working, how can employees create the same meaningful social connections between them when working remotely? Employers will have to work hard to ensure employees are able to re-create the office chit-chat remotely whereas before coronavirus, this didn’t require too much effort on their part.

9. CORONAVIRUS AND A NEW SOCIAL CONTRACT

The idea of a social contract has attracted debate for centuries. If you’ll forgive the over-simplification, the idea is that there is a contract agreed between people and government whereby citizens agree to follow certain government-made rules in order to ensure rights exists and those rights are protected.

As noted by the FT, coronavirus and our fight against it – benefits some at the expense of others. Children have been asked to suspend their education, workers are being asked to forgo their income whilst the victims of coronavirus are overwhelmingly the older generation. As the editorial board of the FT state “sacrifices are inevitable, but every society must demonstrate how it will offer restitution to those who bear the heaviest burden of national efforts.”

Social contract at work

This leads us to consider what changes may be afoot in the workplace. Many private sector companies have received bail-outs in the form of the coronavirus job retention scheme or other resources such as loans. What will be the price of these helping hands? The shape of regulatory and policy intervention from the government remains to be seen, but redistribution and wealth taxes will surely be on the cards. Traction is building alongside the traditional commentary around ideas of a universal basic income.

More responsible capitalism?

McKinsey’s Kevin Sneader draws a comparison between the backlash the financial institutions suffered from after being seen as culpable for the financial crisis and now the same private sector has received huge help from the government in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

The media has already publically shamed business owners who are independently wealthy yet have relied on financial support in the form of the job retention, or furlough scheme. Given many businesses are now “likely to be operating to some extent with public money”, Sneader expects ‘intense’ scrutiny of how these funds have been used during the coronavirus lockdown. Some businesses have already publicly announced their intention to repay money received from the government’s furlough scheme such as IKEA and the Spectator magazine after assessing their prospects. Having seen the positive reaction from their taxpayer customers, it is likely more businesses will follow suit to benefit from the positive PR.

The role of employee work councils

The RSA Bridges to the Future argues that the ‘twin challenges of economic insecurity and labour-market transforming technologies require a new blueprint social contract for good work’. One of the eight ideas put forward for a new social contract is to increase the amount of works councils, suggesting that any business that received a bail out as part of the coronavirus pandemic should be legally required to set up a works council if they employ more than 20 staff.

This article was written by Helen Coombes, an Associate in the employment team at Lewis Silkin LLP.

In collaboration with Lewis Silkin and the RSA, the Future of Work Hub is hosting a series of online discussions looking at the impact of the Covid-19 crisis and emerging trends on the future of work. Please join us – click here for further details and registration.