Author Archives: memoriesandsuch

The Future of Work in a post-COVID World

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When COVID hit in early 2020, the world was in shock, especially with the lockdowns and cities shut down. Workplaces became empty and many city centres which were dominated by towering skyscrapers filled with office spaces became ghost towns. COVID has dramatically changed the way we live and work and affected virtually every element of life.

COVID has been the most significant, and perhaps the most traumatic, experience of our lives. It will have a huge impact on us as individuals, as a society and as a workforce. And even when this crisis ends, things will never be back to normal. We will live in a completely different world and that will be the new normal.

The abrupt closure of many offices and workplaces ushered in a new era of remote work for millions and has shown a significant shift in the way a large segment of the workforce operates in the future. Most of those who say their work responsibilities can mainly be done from home say that, before the pandemic, they rarely or never teleworked. Very few could work from home all or most of the time, but today more than half of such people are doing their job from home all or most of the time. And more than half say, given a choice, they would want to keep working from home even after the pandemic.

While not seamless, the transition to working from home has been relatively easy for many with most of them saying it has been easy to instal the technology and get hold of the equipment to do the job. Most also say it’s been easy for them to meet deadlines and complete projects on time, get their work done without interruptions and feel motivated to do their work.

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Many of us, especially those of us who are technologically challenged, had to adjust to new technologies and learn new ways of interacting with colleagues and friends. Zoom and other video conferencing apps became part of our lexicon and we learnt to find those corners at home which would not reveal the mess behind.

The idea of working at home in itself is not a new concept with many, especially those in the IT sector working from home is an old concept. I read somewhere that working from home or telecommuting has grown by as much as 173% since 2005 due to improvements in technology, innovation and communication. As a result, more than half of employees have a job where at least some of what they do can be done from home.  A 2019 Owl Labs report found that as many as 80% of employees wanted to work from home at least some of the time, before the crisis. Flexibility is one of the top-ranked work benefits amongst the millennial workforce and pre-crisis, more than a third of employees would go so far as to change jobs if they had the chance to work from home, whilst over a third would take a pay cut of up to 5% to work at home some of the time. Today, these figures will most likely have gone up.

Remote work and virtual meetings are likely to continue, albeit less intensely than at the pandemic’s peak. Many companies have transitioned to hybrid work culture and many organisations have decided to reduce their office space. As a result of this demand for restaurants and retail in downtown areas and areas with a concentration of office spaces as well as for public transportation may decline as a result. And while working on this post, I decided to check on job sites and saw that now there are many full-time remote opportunities in sectors that traditionally did not offer it like IT. This means that in countries with smaller cities and rural areas, when people can work anywhere, reverse migration can and is taking place. I have heard of people moving out of the big Indian cities like Mumbai and Bengaluru and going back to their hometowns so they can be with family and yet earn the income they were already earning. I remember reading an article about professionals renting large apartments in places like the seaside and the hills and with access to high-speed internet, they were able to have a much better lifestyle and standard of living.

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Remote work has also put a dent in business travel as its extensive use of videoconferencing during the pandemic has ushered in a new acceptance of virtual meetings and other aspects of work. While leisure travel and tourism are rebounding, and are likely to rebound after the crisis, McKinsey’s travel practice estimates that about 20% of business travel, the most lucrative segment for airlines, may not return. This would have significant knock-on effects on employment in commercial aerospace, airports, hospitality, and food service. E-commerce and other virtual transactions are booming.

Many consumers discovered the convenience of e-commerce and other online activities during the pandemic. In 2020, the share of e-commerce grew at two to five times the rate before COVID-19. Roughly three-quarters of people using digital channels for the first time during the pandemic say they will continue using them when things return to normal, according to McKinsey Consumer Pulse surveys conducted around the world. Other kinds of virtual transactions such as telemedicine, online banking, and streaming entertainment have also taken off including online doctor consultations. This shift to digital transactions has propelled growth in delivery, transportation, and warehouse jobs. In China, e-commerce, delivery, and social media jobs grew by more than 5.1 million during the first half of 2020.

Many companies deployed automation and AI to reduce workplace density and cope with surges in demand. Research finds the work arenas with high levels of human interaction are likely to see the greatest acceleration in the adoption of automation and AI. Hiring has also changed. Today, the default way of interviewing potential candidates is by video call when only a few months ago the default was face-to-face interviewing.

So what does this mean moving forward? It means that for employees, the chance to balance work and home will be important. Now that the world has shown that regular remote and flexible work can be productive without disrupting or undermining established ways of working, it will be the new normal going forward. A lot of people, especially introverts who do not need to showcase their gregariousness and be extroverts, can showcase their productivity and prove their mettle. There are already reports of the positive impact that more frequent, structured and focused communication is resulting in increased collaboration, teamwork and support. Now that more people have had a taste of it and proven their productivity, it will be hard for companies to take it away from their talent. A Gallup survey revealed that 54% of U.S. workers would leave their current job for one that allowed them to work remotely. And while professionals were celebrating their 30-second commute, it became clear to companies that the huge line item on their spreadsheets for real estate may not be the best way to spend their money. Having people work from home, even if it’s not everyone all the time, is proving to be profitable.

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Flexibility will be the new mantra—where people will be given more freedom to choose to work from home. Some people missed the commute and cherished their in-person connections, so the new normal will be increased flexibility. Conference rooms, meeting spaces and video studios will take up a lot of office space with the workplace becoming a far more social environment, not a lock myself in the office scenario. It will be designed to foster and promote interaction and community engagement, taking advantage of the times talent is collocated in one place.

Many professionals found working from home a challenge not because of isolation, but because they didn’t have the ideal space or a dedicated home office. They didn’t have a Zoom-ready spot for video meetings. A study reports that the majority of survey respondents cited a lack of proper technology for remote work that hindered their success and productivity. One of the biggest challenges people experienced while working fom home was internet performance. According to a survery by WhistleOut, a company that provides information about mobile phone and internet services, 35% of adults who transitioned to working from home said that weak Internet has prevented them from doing their work at some point during the coronavirus crisis and 43% said they have had to use their phone as a hotspot during the crisis. Internet in homes will improve, and home offices and even home video studios will become a priority. As new homes are built or existing ones are remodelled, a home office will be the top priority for

Post COVID-19, e-learning will become a bigger part of ongoing learning. In-person learning won’t go away, but it’ll be reserved for certain functions and certain populations within the company. Face-to-face learning will likely be just a small element of a learning curriculum. Ramping up their e-learning platforms, companies moved quickly to ensure that their people were still building important skills and developing professionally.

Video is at the heart of many of the changes above. The developers behind Zoom, WebEx, Hangouts, Skype and other video communications tools made the grand work-from-home experiment possible. The video became fully integrated into the work experience in an astonishing variety of ways. As supervisors and staffers have gotten used to seeing each other in their natural habitats, the line that separates work life and personal life has faded. Ironically, technology has made this transition possible, but it has also led to a decidedly low-tech reality: this new corporate world has made us value our organic, non-robotic humanity more than ever before.

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The shift to remote work led to the complete collapse of the work-home boundary, especially for parents juggling child care and homeschooling with job demands. Poorly timed or endless Zoom meetings interfered with people’s ability to get work done and sometimes harmed relationships with colleagues. At the same time, people, especially those with comfortable home offices and few parental responsibilities, found benefits in working remotely. Being on their own gave them greater control with fewer distractions. The absence of commuting gave people more time and energy while saving them money. People who had been working in unpleasant or hostile workplaces were now free from disrespectful encounters.

The Coronavirus pandemic has seen a sharp rise in mental health issues. While this is in no way a positive outcome, it has resulted in businesses focusing more closely on employee’s mental wellbeing. Companies are doing more than ever to protect and promote positive mental wellbeing among teams; a trend that will continue even as the world returns to normal. People burn out because their employers have not successfully managed chronic job stressors.

The pandemic has taught many people that the job does not have to be the way it was. This realisation may be one reason that many are not going back to their old jobs. The workplace must change. So as we transition to a new normal of working, it is with the hope that many of these positive work outcomes such as a greater focus on mental health and wellbeing, more freedom and flexibility for employees and outstanding innovations will keep workforces happy and healthy while businesses will remain creative, responsive and successful.

In My Hands Today…

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Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World – Cal Newport

One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming increasingly rare. If you master this skill, you’ll achieve extraordinary results.

Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there’s a better way.

In Deep Work, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four “rules,” for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill.

A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, Deep Work takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories-from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air-and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored. Deep Work is an indispensable guide to anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world.

Instagaram Interludes

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My favourite time of the day is during sunrise and sunset when nature puts out a show for us. During sunrises, the gradual lightening of the sky and the colour pop colours that eventually fade when the sun makes an appearance is something I can watch again and again. And then when the reverse happens in the evening, it’s amazing.

A few months back, when I was in Mumbai, helping my parents wrap up things, I used to walk in the terrace everyday, both mornings and evenings, during sunrise and sunset. Here are some of my favourite photos, almost all of them of the same location, because of well east and west. All the photos have almost no filter and were shot on my phone.

In My Hands Today…

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Don’t Overthink It – Anne Bogel

We’ve all been there: stuck in a cycle of what-ifs, plagued by indecision, paralyzed by the fear of getting it wrong. Nobody wants to live a life of constant overthinking, but it doesn’t feel like something we can choose to stop doing. It feels like something we’re wired to do, something we just can’t escape. But is it?

Anne Bogel’s answer is no. Not only can you overcome negative thought patterns that are repetitive, unhealthy, and unhelpful, you can replace them with positive thought patterns that will bring more peace, joy, and love into your life. In Don’t Overthink It, you’ll find actionable strategies that can make an immediate and lasting difference in how you deal with questions both small–Should I buy these flowers?–and large–What am I doing with my life? More than a book about making good decisions, Don’t Overthink It offers you a framework for making choices you’ll be comfortable with, using an appropriate amount of energy, freeing you to focus on all the other stuff that matters in life.

Climate Change: Happening Here, Happening Now

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Over the past few months, the heat in Singapore has been crazy. And it’s not just Singapore, I have been hearing about weird climatic conditions from many parts of the world and the newspapers were full of unprecedented weather conditions and climate change and its effects on mankind. So I decided to read up more about what this is all about so I am better prepared to deal with it.

The United Nations defines climate change as the long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. These shifts may be natural, such as through variations in the solar cycle. But since the 1800s, human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.

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Climate change destabilises the Earth’s temperature equilibrium and has far-reaching effects on human beings and the environment. A distinction is made between the direct and indirect effects of climate change. During global warming, the energy balance and thus the temperature of the earth change, due to the increased concentration of greenhouse gases, which has a significant impact on humans and the environment.

Burning fossil fuels generates greenhouse gas emissions that act like a blanket wrapped around the Earth, trapping the sun’s heat and raising temperatures. Examples of greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change include carbon dioxide and methane. These come from using gasoline for driving a car or coal for heating a building, for example. Clearing land and forests can also release carbon dioxide. Landfills for garbage are a major source of methane emissions. Energy, industry, transport, buildings, agriculture and land use are among the main emitters. Greenhouse gas concentrations are at their highest levels in two million years. And emissions continue to rise. As a result, the Earth is now about 1.1°C warmer than it was in the late 1800s. The last decade between 2011 and 2020 was the warmest on record.

Many people think climate change mainly means warmer temperatures. But temperature rise is only the beginning of the story. Because the Earth is a system, where everything is connected, changes in one area can influence changes in all others. The consequences of climate change now include, among others, intense droughts, water scarcity, severe fires, rising sea levels, flooding, melting polar ice, catastrophic storms and declining biodiversity. Climate change can affect our health, ability to grow food, housing, safety and work. Some of us are already more vulnerable to climate impacts, such as people living in small island nations and other developing countries. Conditions like sea-level rise and saltwater intrusion have advanced to the point where whole communities have had to relocate, and protracted droughts are putting people at risk of famine. In the future, the number of climate refugees is expected to rise.

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The effects of climate change and global warming which we see today are irreversible for our generation and it will only worsen in the decades to come. The effects are already here and today we can see glaciers shrinking, ice on rivers and lakes breaking up earlier, trees flowering sooner, unseasonal weather and the shifting of plant and animal ranges. Effects that scientists had predicted in the past would result from global climate change are now occurring like the loss of sea ice, accelerated sea-level rising and longer, more intense heat waves.

According to a study published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the range of published evidence indicates that the net damage costs of climate change are likely to be significant and to increase over time.  Scientists have high confidence that global temperatures will continue to rise for decades to come, largely due to greenhouse gases produced by human activities and forecast a temperature rise of 2.5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century. The extent of climate change effects on individual regions will vary over time and with the ability of different societal and environmental systems to mitigate or adapt to change.

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The direct consequences of man-made climate change include rising maximum temperatures, rising minimum temperatures, rising sea levels, higher ocean temperatures, an increase in heavy precipitation including heavy rain and hail, an increase in the proportion of violent tropical cyclones, an increase in aridity and drought, a decline in Arctic sea ice and snow cover, glacier recession and retreat and thawing permafrost.

The indirect consequences of climate change, which directly affect us humans and our environment, include an increase in hunger and water crises, especially in developing countries, threats to livelihoods from floods and forest fires, health risks due to an increase in frequency and intensity of heat extremes, economic implications of dealing with secondary damage related to climate change, the increasing spread of pests and pathogens, the loss of biodiversity due to limited adaptability and adaptability speed of flora and fauna, ocean acidification due to increased bicarbonate concentrations in the water as a consequence of increased carbon concentrations and the need for adaptation in all areas including agriculture, forestry, energy, infrastructure and tourism. Many changes, especially changes in the ocean, ice sheets and global sea level, due to past and future greenhouse gas emissions over centuries to millennia, are irreversible. Sea levels will continue to rise and are expected to increase by one to eight feet by 2100 and the Arctic Ocean is expected to become essentially ice-free in summer before mid-century.

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This sounds so dire and leaves a very uncertain world for future generations, but what can be done? Transformation in nearly all facets of our economies is necessary. The longer we wait to implement it, the more radical and impossible it will appear. The good news is that low-carbon energy sources are more affordable than ever. Transitioning the energy sector to clean, renewable systems is often the same price, or cheaper, than sustaining the existing carbon-intensive systems, especially when we consider the damage they are doing to the planet that will also cost billions to recover from or adapt to. Transforming the way we feed the planet is crucial, too. Unsustainable agriculture is a primary driver of deforestation, which in turn destroys wildlife habitats, increases carbon emissions, erodes income sources for local communities, and increases our risk of pandemics. Moving agriculture to sustainable practices can benefit food security and biodiversity, all while slashing emissions. It would be a win-win for people and nature. Restoring and expanding ecosystems like mangroves can not only help absorb and store carbon, but also protect from extreme weather, economically sustain communities, and preserve some of the world’s most biodiverse ecosystems.

Finally, across all sectors one of the biggest lacking pieces is finance. Today’s investments are currently three to six times lower than they need to be by 2030 for climate solutions to be at scale with the magnitude of the crisis. As economies are recovering from COVID-19, governments have a prime opportunity to inject funds into transformative climate action and international cooperation for a brighter future.

Collective power has extraordinary strength. Combining our voices to call for transformational climate action can influence political leaders, industries, and businesses that are the top decision-makers on whom cutting carbon emissions depends. We must cut emissions and enact a just transition to a clean, renewables-powered economy. We must take advantage of existing climate solutions by putting more money behind them. Developed countries must take accountability for their far-outsized contributions to the climate crisis and lead this transformation. Let’s not wait any longer, but act now, there is still time – for people, for the planet, and a brighter future.