Disruptions or Reconstructions

 Disruptions or Reconstructions 

The covid 19 crisis has transformed the works, work places, organizations in last one year.  The customers and their choices and aspirations from buying experiences, nature of selecting the products, the importance of accessibility to the product, information communicated through advertisements etc which was changed on compulsion, slowly being converted to routine, being accepted as part of living. The whole transformation has great impact on human thoughts and expectations from a particular service and product. 

Transformation in work and workplaces

In last few months the design of the job has been changed drastically and knowledge, skill and attitude (KSA) required to perform that job has also changed up to certain level. So millions of people have lost their jobs for different reasons, for absence of requirement, mismatch in  skill set or forced obsolesce, will not be required in future because of change of culture, taste and preferences. Just for example, the requirement of very big infrastructure for office, office equipment, office facilities, dining etc. has decreased substantially, where the requirement and maintenance of IT infrastructure, the demand for IT gazettes, cleaning products starting from sanitiser, soap, hand wash , sanitisation equipment have increased in many folds.  

In the workplaces, in IT related jobs or jobs can be done from home, are being done remotely from the place of residence and for other jobs, where physical presence is required , which needs human intervention like house keeping, plumbing, health care services, office jobs executed by physical presence  are being done with one third or one fourth man power. We all expect that the remote working experiences of employers and employees have brought lots of opportunities and challenges, which may attract attentions for number of business decisions, to be reconsidered and redesigned starting from Long run strategy, resource planning, investment planning, job design, delivery mechanism, reframing experiences of customers etc. Most of the industries may go for blended mode of  working style considering the nature of job and its long term impact on business.

Visiting a saloon or parlor had the expectation of a luxury environment, highly trained professionals ready with their instruments to serve, very clean and well decorated chairs and beds etc. But, suddenly it has changed to home service, which involves prompt response to online request, reliability, accommodative in a residential environment and so on. But a great change has happened to the profession is that specialist culture has changed to a single person being ‘Master of All’.  

Impact on Investment

Investment on infrastructure or physical resources has slowly shifted to investment on Human Resources, Intellectual Resources and Technology , as services are becoming human centric and technology centric. The impact of work places, with well designed campuses, big office space, well equipped discussion rooms / relief rooms etc with the facility of snacking, jimming, exercising etc. are no more building the human confidence and emotions. The people are being more dependent on yoga, meditation, life experiences, self realization, self reflections etc. The remote and blended mode of working may require more investment on technology, which is more dynamic and will require change or upgradation in much faster rate than physical infrastructure, which will have no resale value. So such investments will carry high risk for the entrepreneurs and will drastically increase the working capital cost. 

More Connected to Purpose than the Process

The distorted work place will generate a very distinct model, which will be very stringent as per the job, to minimise the system error. Those practices will create unique competencies, but will loose flexibility based on human cognition, sensibility and there will be no scope for situational  consideration beyond a predesigned limit. Such system’s flexibility will purely depend upon the scope created by the technology based on regular and most probable situation and ignoring the unpredictable exceptions. 

The work place culture created based on organisational practices, reflections of people contributed for it, the limit set in the process, based on the diversity in culture and knowledge and predictive power, the  goal of the organisation, vision set by the promoters and the strategy to achieve it and its perceived impact on the world.  

Just for example, McKinsey believes that its products and techniques are proprietary and not publicized. The firm’s core competency is in the consistent products and techniques that constitute the McKinsey way.

The link between employees, product market strategy and customer is not direct, if we move away from service industries. There the purpose or goal takes a central place and become the core to connect to human emotions or dreams, which slowly creates processes with the people, the competencies, skills available in and around which 

End of Legacy System or Creation of New Era

All Management Gurus created knowledge to improve the work place experiences starting from Cultural intelligence, emotional intelligence, spiritual intelligences, ……. To read Many intelligence systems connected to human beings, its behavior, nature, aspirations, ambitions etc. may take a back stage in a blended system, where hardcore technology, domain knowledge will take the front stage. The chances are there for the end of a legacy system and will be purely based on short term strategy, goal and achievements.

Situation can be also be just reverse. The absence of a predefined system, which can be perceived and followed, the importance of soft skill may increase to bring the human centric prospective to the system. The power of communication, power of persuasion, correctness in forecasting the future, empathy to understand the people, their choices, preferences and behaviour without seeing them, without interacting with them, will take prominent place.  Business will demand an extremely high level of co-ordination across its networks, which can be achieved through highly regimented and standardised job design. 

Let us hope for the best………