How the Corona crisis redefines jobs
The Corona crisis offers managers an unprecedented opportunity to redefine work processes. Those who seize this opportunity now will make their company more flexible, efficient and successful. This requires project marketplaces, intelligent automation and forward-looking talent development.
The Covid-19 outbreak has forced organizations to undertake a significant social work experiment. Homework and the politics of social distancing have radically changed the way we work and interact. The effects do not only concern the choice of the place of work. The crisis also affects the type of work and how it is carried out.
Many employees are now carrying out tasks that they could not imagine just a few weeks ago.
With workplaces at the centre of their work, managers have an unprecedented opportunity to redesign them. You can reorganize the pending work and reallocate responsibilities. Work, talents and skills must be shifted to where and when they are most needed. In this way, they build the organizational resilience and agility necessary to cope with uncertain times - and return with strength when the economy recovers.
1. enable mobile working
Given the current situation with Covid-19, it is more important than ever to get people into the most mission critical work as quickly and efficiently as possible. By breaking out of rigid job restrictions, the right talents and the right work can be brought together. This allows new business challenges to be solved in real time. Networks of teams that are able to operate outside the existing organisational hierarchy and outside bureaucratic structures are a crucial ability to react quickly in times of crisis.
Set up internal project marketplaces where work is divided into tasks and projects. And then search throughout the organization for employees who are currently available and have the appropriate skills. These marketplaces can enable people who suddenly find themselves deprived of their normal work tasks to quickly and easily find another job where they can use their core or adjacent skills where their contribution makes a difference.
Such marketplaces also allow companies to quickly refill a sick employee, hire additional team members for business-critical projects and deal with sudden hiring stops. A human resources manager facing a hiring freeze recently split a planned new hiring position into five part-time positions for existing employees - giving employees new opportunities to learn and grow while enabling him to meet his business objectives.
By breaking down workplaces into subtasks, it is also easier to identify which tasks can be performed by employees working in other geographical locations. Assign tasks that do not have to be done on site to people in the home office. This saves you expensive office space.
2. speed up automation.
For certain types of work, automation can increase reliability, improve safety and well-being and cope with sudden peaks in demand. Indeed, in today's economic environment, automation is not a job killer, it is an obligatory ability to deal with a crisis.
Example call center: Automation can accelerate response times and free agents from transactional tasks. This allows them to focus on responding to customers' needs with empathy and emotional intelligence.
3. create cross-sector talent exchanges
In every company there are talents that lie idle and are not encouraged. So develop a cross-industry exchange of talent! Employees who are out of work due to the crisis can be temporarily transferred to those organisations that have a surplus of work. In this way, the frictional and reputational costs associated with the dismissal of employees are avoided, while employees are supported in developing new skills and networks.
Although the Covid 19 pandemic is a difficult time, it can also be a time of unprecedented creativity. Redefining jobs under the constraints of today's challenging business environment can open up innovative ways of how, where and by whom work is done. Ultimately, this can help us build greater resilience and efficiency in our organizations and help people live healthier and more sustainable lives.
