Bird’s Eye View - Changing concepts emerged rapidly in 2020.

As the onset of Corona, better known as Novel Corona Virus, has started to take toll on our lives, all our normal routine has been hampered. The daily hassle of going to school and office has been stopped abruptly. But life needs to go on for all of us. COVID-19 may have stopped our daily routine but stopping our activities and learning curve can hamper all our mental balances as well. Owing to this, the organizations came out with a solution of “Work from Home” & “Learn from Home”. These are not something nobody knew about; it was mostly something which people were not accustomed with in life.

Starting with the concept of “Learn from Home”, a measure taken by the educational institutions so that the learnings for the students are not stopped. The educators are making an extra effort to teach the students the subjects through video conferencing from the comfort of our homes. Obviously, this cannot substitute going to school and colleges where we experience the physical presence of our teachers and professors, but this method is the proof that for a temporary basis, studies can be continued basis the change. Again, not a new concept, personally I know of an organization who is doing the same in the remotest villages where there is lack of teachers for imparting quality education to the children of the residents. This is now being followed by schools and universities however reputed or small they are. In this model, the most important part is the students to be self-disciplined. On practical grounds, this is difficult to implement this, which is why parents should know how much they should involve making their kids self-disciplined. Complains are also floating from the educators that sometimes, for kids’ parents are interfering too much into the conversation of the teachers and their students. Like every other model, this one also has few flaws but if parents and students understand and follow on how to behave it is going to be an easy task in the forthcoming days.

Coming to the work force of our country, the model of “Work from Home” has been there since early 2000s, though people were not used to this. Now, due to the current Covid-19 Situation, this has become the new normal. When it comes to workforce, most of them are self-disciplined and contented when working from home. Due to this model, individuals can save a lot of travel time, which was tiring them as well. With zero travelling, as surveyed by leading companies, the employees have increased their productivity with a little supervision such as daily calls and status mails. Not only this, but employees who have ailing family members at home, they could cater to their needs as well as continue their regular office work as well. The new concept of flexible hours has been increasing ever since. Along with this, the employees are contended that they can take care of household works and again at the same time complete their responsibility towards their organization. If we browse through the satisfaction levels of employees, this has increased manifold, which has also resulted in the increase of the productivity of the employees. According to the latest surveys by leading research organizations, the productivity of employees has increased to 10-15% from the pre-covid times.

But always as a coin has two sides, there are a few negatives which has come along with the “Work from Home” concept. Earlier, there was a definite time and place for office and once an employee comes home, it was a complete family time for them. Currently due to this concept, this has completely changed and currently there is no defined workplace, and the work life balance has gone for a toss. Few managers have exploited the “Work from Home” situation and in the name of flexible hours an employee is made to work for more than 12 hours a day. Due to the job market in the current scenario, employees are as well pressurized to perform as instructed by the managers as the fear of getting fired is looming around the corporate world. The other side of the negative vibes which the “Work from Home” concept brings is the decreasing socialization of individuals. If we see in a global level, when the norm was working from office, every employee would go to office and could interact with their colleagues on a daily basis. This would in turn strengthen their bond and increase their interpersonal skills. Currently, working from home, everything has gone on a virtual level and this has resulted in creating depression for employees and people in general as they cannot personally interact in the office environment. The resulting effects are also seen in the health of employees as there is little to no physical labor of travelling involved for the white-collar job employees.

Currently, the growing trend in corporate world, especially the white-collar job, is inclining towards making the “Work from Home” concept permanent. As is evident from the news around us, few technological companies have started this initiative and few others have announced the same to be implemented in a period of time. From the broader viewpoint, we can see this will have significant positive and negative impact in our surroundings. With the concept of permanent work from home, companies can reduce a lot of operating costs, which can increase their profit margin. In the pre-covid times, the companies were investing heavily on civil infrastructure, providing facilities in the office premises for the employees, which would take a huge cut in the administration and operating costs. Due to new emerging “Work from Home” concept, a significant chunk of the costs will be reduced. This will also have a huge impact on the labor class since, most of the office attendants and cleaning staff will be cut down since most of the employees will be working from home.

Talking about the environmental aspect, since the corporate offices are closed and most of the workforce is working from home, we can see global reduction in the carbon footprint on the environment. There is environmental progression due to less pollution all over the world and the ozone hole damage is recovering, the rivers are reclaiming their purity and we are able to breathe more fresh air.

On seeing all of these from a bird’s eye view, we can say that the concepts of education and work are changing rapidly over time. The age-old traditional concepts are going to be extinct with new concepts taking their place. These changes may have a lot of effects on the society, both positive and negative. But as we can see the rapid change in the concepts of life and work from the early 2000s, may be this will become the new normal for the world in the coming decade. Lastly, as quoted by various leaders, we can witness when the phrase says,

“The only constant in life is Change”