The impacts of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) will likely be measured for years to come. At the very least, like SARS it will be compared to future health events such as this. The impact on the technology industry is hitting in a big way more recently and with greater urgency as virtually every industry considers how to continue operations in a different way. While the immediate threats will likely be contained soon, like other scares before it, there is no hiding from the fact that organisations are fundamentally looking at how they work and are seeking to accelerate any ‘work from home’ strategies.
Working remotely has been around for many years and the new ways of working has been consistently changing the organisational construct to enable people to work via mobile devices, VPN’s and remote workstations. Collaboration via digital technologies has been increasing exponentially with each new feature as people even in the same workspace share information, knowledge and plans in their digital workspace.
With key messages from world health leaders to drastically reduce populated areas, students are moving even further into distance learning, with the added pressure of the government bans on travellers from overseas, international students are unable to attend universities effectively hitting one of the most profitable areas of the educational sector. Particularly in countries like Australia where students come to study at some of our nations top institutions.
Educational institutions have been forced to accelerate their online learning programs, even if for the first of the years semester in order that students are able to commence their studies and attend later. It makes sense that educational organisations that have already invested in online learning have a head start but there is no doubt that online study is going to change even more than it has already.
Similarly, businesses small and large are sending staff home to work at a moments notice if there is even a hint of exposure to staff with COVID-19 like symptoms. In many cases, these are organisations that have never had to provide ‘work from home’ facilities before and may not be used to implementing such practices. While the premise might seem simple enough, take your laptop and access your apps and email from home as long as you have an internet connection. The reality is that as an organisation, leaders may not yet be accustomed to working with staff who are not onsite. Discussions, scrums, team meetings and the like which would have been the norm are not occurring in the same manner and require a digital approach (Facetime, Skype, Google Hangouts etc) and this is a change in how they do things. Monitoring work productivity is often needed to be addressed as inevitably there are those that work really well offsite and those that seem to get distracted.
Technology support areas of the business seem to have been inundated with new requests for security changes, VPN’s access through firewalls and the provision of applications and services via remote locations. Moving key applications if not all, to the cloud for greater accessibility and ensuring that they are all available outside the network. This brings about a whole new raft of security needs that should be addressed in order for this to take place. Protection of data, monitoring of services and the use of tools remotely – including internet speeds required for some of the modern applications through remote desktops and even the prioritisation of staff, who gets support first and who gets the most attention. These present a range of new issues and urgency for tech support staff as new and innovative ways of addressing these problems are required.
The impact of work from home on the business culture cannot be missed either. Studies have demonstrated the benefits of inter-office relationships, the sharing of information and the organisational culture when working onsite being a huge part of what makes the organisation successful. As an example, imagine working at Google Headquarters and being told to work from home instead? While there are many that enjoy working from home, there are equal studies where people start to feel isolated and no longer part of the organisation and this change needs to be addressed for the organisational workforce to remain productive. At the other end of the spectrum, the staff that have been sent to work from home may not want to return and work in the office anymore.
Most organisations were already looking at such changes and the challenges that they represent, this is not really the issue. What the current COVID-19 has presented however, is the need to address such challenges more rapidly and with greater flexibility. Leaders will no doubt be thinking about such approaches in the coming months and seeking a response from technology leaders, not just to address the current state, but also how to prepare for an event such as this in the future. If they are not, then it certainly needs to be on the technology roadmap.