It seems obvious to say that the world is in the grips of an epoch-changing event – one that will shape the future in ways that we simply could not have imagined mere weeks ago. My home country, South Africa, seems to be in the early foothills of what will undoubtedly be a vast mountain to climb if we are to defeat the disease, or at least avoid the worst potential effects on our society.
The South African government has shown strong leadership, thankfully, in mandating a strict lockdown of movement in order to maximise the effects of social distancing. Whilst nations may differ in their approach to confronting the pandemic, it seems that social distancing is universally accepted as being the best method of slowing the spread of the disease.
But whatever strategies each society uses to combat the virus, the one common effect of social distancing has meant that the way we live and work has changed dramatically. Whilst many sectors of the economy have been devastated, the average office worker has been able to pick her laptop up from her desk and simply start working from home. Just weeks ago, the use of technology to hold a remote-based meeting for the average office-bound worker was irritating, at best. Let’s be honest, that expensive video-conferencing technology installed in the boardroom was great in theory but, raise your hand if you didn’t have to call that guy from IT almost every time you wanted to use it. How much time was wasted trying desperately to connect with the boardroom in the Cape Town office, looking dumbly at a screen showing the people in the room, rather than those in the Cape Town boardroom? “Aaah forget it – let’s just call on my cell phone and I will put it on speaker!” Be honest – we have all been there.
Fast forward just a few weeks – literally a few weeks – and we are all now experts at hosting or attending a video meeting via Zoom, Microsoft Teams or some other such technology. My wife and I are attending a virtual drinks party tomorrow night, for heaven’s sake! We are all simply way more productive than we were just a moment in time ago. This morning I listened to the CEO of a large Medical Aid enterprise describe how his company had partnered with a telecoms giant to deliver remote doctor consultations for those who suspect that they may have contracted Covid-19. How fantastic – consulting a medical doctor via a smart phone from your sickbed, without the need to physically travel to her consulting rooms and the associated risk of infecting others.
The truth is that the technology that powered these leaps in productivity had existed for quite some time and many of us are only now waking up to a life of using technology to meet the demands of the way we live and work. The inverse now seems so dumb – we no longer need to live or work according to the degree of technology we own – most of these technologies are easy to access and, in most cases, free to use. The Generation Z grouping already knew this, of course – the rest of us are simply playing catch-up!
I suspect that we will soon witness the rapid and pervasive uptake of these, and other similar technologies and that life will evolve to be more remote and yet, in this way, more connected. I think that companies will begin to grasp that you can trust staff to work from home more often or that you may not actually need to travel in order to hold an effective meeting. Yes, there are no doubt cultural and psychological matters to consider as the workplace evolves in this way, but I think we have Covid-19 to thank for shoving us into a world where we can make “remote” actually work. Who knows what new tech that enables us to connect will hit the market soon? Anyone for a virtual workout?
By Gavin Jones of Wax Consulting