The New Normal - 2020 AC (After Covid19)

Have you watched the 1984 comedy hit-movie “Blame it on Rio”... today, that applies to “Really Blame it on Covid19”. The harsh reality is that, all of us are enduring the memes / WhatsApp forwards and learning to comprehend.

Before Covid19, be it the home makers, who hopefully had their space through the day or be it the corporate professionals or entrepreneurs, we are all getting used to the new-normal!!

Stepping on each other’s toes, now has a new meaning one.

Literally and figuratively !

Personally as well as business-model-wise, this forced #covid19 curfew is going to change many things for all of us.

For last few years of studying and working with millennials & Gen Z, I have believed that office space for most of us, who travel for work regularly, is nothing but “social identity”... we don’t know what to do without that “me-space”!! And it’s also ego / vanity / hierarchy-at-play !

Learning to work without air conditioning through the day.

Learning to work without an office service team member helping you with tea / coffee etc .

Learning to work without WiFi of good speed and all IT infra set at office. 

And learning to pay for all of above.

These would be learning to work-from-home. 

For most of us in cities, and in service industry, we may not need to drive or get stuck in crazy city traffic. We can still deliver our services (work) and earn a living.

What’s that going to do to automobile sales ? Already the shared-economy has had an impact on that industry, as well as Public Transportation services.

Shockingly mumbai (surely like most big cities) sounds (pun intended) without any noise pollution since the Covid19 lockdown. 

You can actually hear the birds chirp (and your spouse loud & clear). Overall air pollution has dropped and we are breathing fresh and better quality air. 

I heard of few complaints from friends that they could not sleep well the initial 2 nights of the lockdown, not because of their worries on Covid19, but because it was so silent (something that they were not used to before).

Our land regulations around residential / commercial demarcation was also to price the services of the public services like power, water etc. Hence the office complexes paid a premium over residential electricity charges. 

What happens to the business model of a electricity company if a chunk of our service economy population starts work from home ? Similarly the impact of such an outcome on commercial realty pricing. 

Luckily our telecom industry, despite its financial woes, has bestowed on us the goodness of low-priced data & voice services. And thanks to that, our data usage has exploded to the level that we probably won’t know how to behave if data services were stopped for a day or two. On that count, access to tele-commute is available. And this lockdown is making us practise it. 

“No commuting. Only tele commuting.”

Is this sustainable after we cross the Covid issue? 

Can job roles that don’t need physical office space be moved to WFH concept? 

For regulated industries, can regulators globally figure out a way to allow this with sufficient safety restrictions, including that of data privacy issues?

What happens to the airline industry? Will people stop traveling as regularly as they did for work? Will they blend telecommute with domestic / International Airport? Or will the human-wanderlust continue ? And kick-start the travel for holidays quickly?

A re-look at the impact of the new-normal at corporate world could also mean dress code differentiation. Leaving aside those who are sermonising to the world that you should be prim and proper and formal dress code even for VC, are forgetting these societal behaviour keep changing with shifts in demographics. 

What about team building exercises that HR experts (used to) love? It needs to adapt to the digital world. Wish there were more research and HR experts pay attention to the societal shifts basis the proportion of millennials & Gen-Z in our workforce; apart from the perfunctory lip service that most HR leaders have done so far.

From larger society perspective, this lockdown is having an impact on sleep patterns & fitness regimes. Lesser pollution and quality family time has a positive correlation to better quality (& probably quantity) sleep. That could well be disrupted if the WFH concept does not take off.

At home, family members who saw each other for few minutes over a hurried dinner or so before Covid, might realise that they can actually talk to each other without whatsapping their thoughts to each other. 

At the extreme end of the spectrum, will we also see a rush to Family courts with couples sick of each other after the long shut down and forced-spending-time-with-each-other?

After all this is over, people might embrace the new-normal. We will see rush back to beauty parlours, spas, bars, gyms, sports, etc. 

The ones who can adapt will survive and go ahead.

Or will we humans just use this time-off to sulk and wait till the lockdown is opened; and to go back doing what we did before ? And say WTF to WFH ?

Choice is ours to learn from and to set an example for our next generations to come !