Reflections & Learnings from 2020

The experiences of 2020 and with the year almost closing, there are huge expectations for the years next. The VUCA world has exposed us the fact that survival shall be for those who are agile, resilient and are prepared for ambiguous business conditions that threw challenges in every possible angle and kept us on toes. Even as we look at new normal competencies, many of us have started requesting for “Hands On Leadership qualities” and gone are the days where leaders were expected to only supervise their teams by overseeing the daily deliverables.  

Some of the reflections that I had been observing and thinking are posing me to clearer expectations of future – Living a life in the world of uncertainty, the quicker you think and the faster you act are some of the most important qualities of future for almost all the roles.

Business Revenue & Overheads

There are many businesses that have lost substantially and in particular those who are small time vendors. It shall be memorable year as many large corporates came forward to support these small vendors through various technological interventions, people agenda change and also allowing their marketing and sales teams to scaleup, directly and / or through digital marketing strategies.  

Loss of Jobs

This was one of the most painful areas seen by many people. It was disheartening to see people getting withered just like a drop of a hat and the manner in which organizations expected others to scale up to the expectations. Cost became all the more super important criteria for all business houses. People joined for lesser pay or lower grade as they grabbed the opportunity. Others who managed to survive in the jobs had to go through another pain called “Pay cuts” for long tenure. More work for lesser pay was one of the most painful journey for all of us.  

Embrace Remote Working

Hurray!! We all jumped in joy as the organizations declared work from home only to realise later, this was a bigger difficulty. Yes we saved substantially in commuting, travel costs, vehicle maintenance etc but at the cost of extended working hours.  I know most of us have worked for a period of nothing lesser than 10 to 12 hours of work every day. One cannot disown the fact technology supported most of our jobs intact. Even many of them who were not hands on tech front learnt them swiftly – either out of commitment or out of fear of loss of jobs!

2020 gave me three big piece of advice –

a.     Can you simplify this work & eliminate redundancies? 

b.    Can you automate within the timelines?

c.    Can you standardize and align globally?

This required a running of collective race with not only my team but also my peers, my managers, my business leaders, my vendors, etc and all virtually!

There are areas that COVID has given immense value and that can never be forgotten. There were many women employees who exploited this opportunity and came back to employment. Unfavourable working hours and lack of remote working opportunities has kept many deserving and aspiring women away from jobs since a while. COVID not only helped these women but also those who resigned their jobs too rethink.  

Global Mobility without mobility is yet another angle that gained intense momentum during the pandemic conditions and all without incurring any money additionally. Many international organizations came forward to offer jobs to super high qualified workers jobs to WFH, without any hustle of the need for visas and the most lucrative soul search like Green Cards! 

BTowns gaining popularity

Offices located in expensive cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore in India and NY, London, UAE etc moved all the employed population allowed employees to vacate the cities nad move to their home countries / cities. This in turn saved their living on rent / co-pay shared accommodation / PG etc. This cost saving came as a boon to employees who worked from home. Nevertheless, the electricity costs shot up but many organizations like #IntertrustGroup supported this too for their employees. Its time for us to collectively survive or collectively perish. So performance was the only option to both employees as well as the organizations.  

Rentals / Lease – Rethinking time!

Several international companies are either deferring new leases, or reshaping their operations especially with respect to the rentals. Most firms are even considering moving a part of their businesses from prime locations to less expensive cities or towns. Companies competed intensely for prime office space in major urban centers around the world, understood the true essence of working differently

We all became more resourceful to support and help others in this COVID times. Be it as an organization to go out of the turn to collate the list of unemployed talent and passing them to various agencies / organizations seeking for help or as citizens helping the poor daily wage worker or feeding the stray animals, we stood together collectively as great citizens, We paused for a while, took a deep breath, and understood that this world belongs to all and our true success is through collective winning!

Startups exploited COVID times

There were so many apps to support organizations and common man. With more and more countries moving away from products from a specific country, there came opportunity for our home grown technology and techsupport.  .

Conventional minds challenged – We had to run “Pay for Performance” so carefully without any loss of high potential talent, without increasing cost and at the same time managing the employees virtually. We could not refer back to any statutory reference points in most countries on support systems to be extended to the employees as the condition is quite new. Additionally we had to document almost all the sensitive employee related communication for us as cautious step during our virtual working. 

Many organizations are rethinking of ideas pertaining to Remote Working, Flexi working etc for year 2021 as we expect the spill over of the pandemic conditions even to first quarter of the next year. Trust me, the number of surveys that the companies have run in 2020 for safety, health and wellbeing, working conditions, employee emotions, engagement surveys, manager feedback, performance management so on and so forth, its truly jaw breaking. The data kept growing so intense and with most of the employees clearly stating they feel safe working from home along with their families.

Many of us were left with changing dynamics of business uncertainty and employee movements during this phase. More jobs came to people who were willing to be flexible, happy to break the traditional way of working, embrace change and their through agile mindset and acted like an entrepreneur. There couldn’t be any time better to say this – when the going gets tough, the tough get going. It would be too unfair to conclude without thanking the IT colleagues who have helped us see a larger picture with their support to people agenda practices telling us clearly that the outcome of digitization will have to be in conjunction with Human Capital and business. The pandemic conditions challenged many on their conventional thought processes managers and entrepreneurs telling the world that there may be better ways of doing things and managing people too & no one can stop the true performance. When forty thieves were crumbling and cribbing, we know Ali Baba was doing a brilliant job! Don’t you agree?