Virtual work and a new model of workforce globalization in the 21st century

As many of you have worked from home due the Covid-19 pandemic it may be worth contemplating how the world of work will change - perhaps forever.

For long I have advocated that the idea that talent and production is a market place. The Industrial Age required creation of segmentation and especiality along the lines of industry and functions. For example, auto industry requires shop floor assembly worker who became experts at their part of the assembly but did not need to know or build skills in much of the rest of the assembly line. There were production managers whose only role was to ensure uptime, worker productivity and there were process managers whose job was to ensure that quality improvement, defect reduction and process design to name a few.

While the functional specialists like production, process, accounting had some transportability of skills with some re-orientation to a new workplace or industry it was rarer for workers to move and that led to worker exploitation, union structures, wage protection etc.

Of course, China became the factory of the world due to a supply of cheap labor, state support and a work ethic that could result in productivity - 8 hour shifts doing repetitive work and becoming great at just that repetitive task.

The 21st century is about possessing core functional/technical skills but more importantly adaptability. mobility (even across borders), lifelong learning as the lifecycles of industries and companies has a half life which is getting steeper and steeper with disruptive technologies and globalization.

What does it mean for most jobs - by that I mean entry level, informal sector jobs in all areas of the economy?

I feel we have to think of a model of a globalized workforce where labor needs are matched with labor supply.

It is easier done, as it is today, with production outsourcing (think China), IT and IT enabled services (think India) and guest labor import (think GCC) or even industrial guest workers (Australian welders in USA) and temporary needs for infrastructure projects (think Chinese workers building roads, ports, dams, airports as part of the One-belt-one-road projects).

It is much more difficult in many other sectors like transportation (Uber, taxi, trucking), healthcare, education, white collar jobs as politics comes into play and the 'hand' government plays in immigration, job protection, and cultural aspects of education.

The current challenge presents an opportunity to reflect and perhaps expect an overhaul of this obsolete workforce - production model.

For example, Japan, much of Europe is going to face a serious aging challenge and the domestic supply of healthcare and home care is not going to meet the demand. These countries need to open these jobs for international workers (through temporary work permits and going all the way to naturalization with some conditions). Philippines for example, has a well organized Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) program and investing in educating and training nurses, healthcare workers in these countries by the 'receiving' countries can result in 'healthcare security'.

Another model is 'glocal'ization - where global expertise and knowledge works in tandem with local presence, network and relationships to deliver an amazing experience for the customers.

For example, In our own business of helping students with 'study abroad' through professional counseling and preparation such a disruption is necessary. Most universities spend an enormous amount of executive time (traveling admission officers and directors) in attending education events, outreach to schools and universities AND significant investment in digital marketing - often with misdirected spending due to poor local market knowledge. The universities should assume a steering role in international student enrollment and work with trusted and capable 'in market partners' to achieve their goals. What does it require? Simply, traditional and digital marketing through 'feet-on-the-ground' with high quality and intensive 'virtual work and outreach tools' like Zoom, WebEx to engage with the students, work collaboratively with the 'in market partners'. The universities that adopt this model will see major gains in their international student intakes as the students too want to work with someone in their proximity and appreciate the frequency of contact with university reps through virtual collaboration tools. Today, they see the university rep at a school or generic career fair once in the year and are disconnected for the rest of the year.

Then there is a global 'gig' workforce marketplace. Here freelancers are delivering 'just in time' knowledge and expertise for short bursts and put their 'time and skills' for sale. This is already happening eg. in web design, social and digital marketing, events and conferences but it can accelerate big time if this is institutionalized and presented on an industrial scale. This is especially relevant where the work doesn't involve physical connection e.g. graphic design, app development, coaching, online streaming education and training, student tutoring, online assessments and customer services of most kinds.

Whether governments, politics like it or not this tsunami of a 'gig', 'glocalization', outsourcing is coming fast. The present 'work from home' or 'remote work' experience will have lessons for workers, companies, governments and nations at large.

My personal take (through experience in my own company) is that the workforce has adapted extremely well to the new reality. The usage and skill in usage of tools like 'MS-Teams' has been an eye opener.

Some rules we followed with great success -

1. Staying in regular touch - we do daily planning and catch up meeting at the beginning of the day and are now experimenting with rotating the steering roles in these meetings to break monotony. We are also constantly refreshing our day-to-day work based on best practices we agree we should experiment with and report back.
2. Flexibility - we found that the 'natural' hours for our type of service starts late morning and ends late evening. With work form home we can actually achieve this. Also, since commute time and fatigue is not there people are more willing to be flexible in the work timings.
3. Update even when there is no update - that's the substitute for the social interaction.
4. Focus - with fewer distractions (barring your young kid, dog or cat) we focus on what is important. What is our daily goal and plan the hours and minutes accordingly.
5. Dip check on stress and fatigue - this is the time to support each other and often our calls begin with asking about health and other factors like not being able to exercise.

This is by no means a ready reckoner but something that is common sense and could be considered by companies of all sizes and shapes.

We all believe we will come through this stronger, start valuing our time and contributions and smarter in terms of organizing our work, prioritization, use of digital tools with impact and yet stay connected as humans.