The pandemic has changed the work landscape for the better. Let’s keep it going
Over the past three years, the way we work has shifted. The pandemic was one of the hardest times any of us had to live through and hopefully something that we will not ever have to go through again. Although there were some incredible lows, there were also some amazing leaps made in the professional business world.
The pandemic changed the way we work and gave us choices to finally understand ourselves and, within the tech world, gave us the ability to really understand the work-life balance. With safety in mind, we adopted flexible work arrangements and embraced technologies that otherwise we may not have. We learned to collaborate seamlessly from relatively safe spaces and our situation ushered in a new wave of technologists to the field. During the pandemic, there were significant changes in the way we worked. Many individuals who had never worked exclusively on a computer or with software tools found themselves adapting to this new reality. Particularly, women were actively developing new skills which, in turn, led to opportunities within this changed landscape.
I realized that we have power! The power to make change and power to make positive contributions to the world that we live in. We have the option to decide whether we want to continue with the proverbial business status quo or make demands to create the change we want to see. We gained the freedom to work somewhere that valued us as humans and not just producers of content for shareholders.
The landscape is forever changed, and things should not go back to normal. I believe that giving options to your teams to work where they feel the most comfortable and happy makes a better work environment and positive outcomes for the enterprises. Although there were a few outliers that potentially took advantage of that level of freedom, most did not. You can look at many of the large-scale companies and see that their overall profits and productivity rose higher, and I do believe that this was because their team members were simply happy.
I am hopeful in the future that companies keep that mindset of safeguarding individualistic freedoms, and, if not, I have a feeling we could be in for another round of “Great Resignations” leading workers to new companies and new leadership that values the human experience within the workplace.
