With the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) saying in mid-April that a three-month UK lockdown followed by three months of partial restrictions would trigger an economic decline of 35.1% in the quarter to June alone. Many people are asking what working life is set to look like for the rest of 2020?
Mark Whitehead, Managing Director of telephony services vendor VoIPLine, says that a lot of the changes we have seen to date in terms of remote working, video-based meetings and other collaboration apps are most likely to stay in place.
“Much will depend upon the exit plan the government comes up with and quite rightly the pace and structure of that exit will be predicated upon the science, the data and the ability of the NHS to be able to withstand a secondary wave of COVID-19 cases and hospitalisation of those infected.
Assuming the UK gets that timing about right, only then will we begin to see what is on the other side as businesses progressively open up for trade. What we won’t see is a return to pre-COVID-19 business life. Come July the virus will still be active and amongst us – no cure in the form of drug treatments and no preventative vaccine will be available. It would be a brave man that bet otherwise.
By July many organisations will have embedded in their remote working programs and be within touching distance of pre-COVID-19 efficiencies. And if that’s working for business then for sure there will be boardroom discussions about the need to scale that back especially if by then there is any hint at remote working delivering the productivity improvements that its proponents always harped on about before.
But for every remote worker on the payroll there are countless more employees that can’t just open up a laptop in their front room and put in a regular shift. Progressively these employees will be invited back into the workplace to resume their duties. Depending on the prevailing circumstances many will do so reluctantly, and most will retain their desires for social distancing.
