The "New Normal" Workspace

With the imposed lockdown and newly accepted norm of social distancing, work from home has replaced the traditional offices in almost every sector, at least as of now. Although the world has already experienced a sneak-peek of remote working long back, work-meets in rectangles is a new normal now. So far it has worked out for the firms, specially IT services. While the practice requires more than just connectivity and productivity, organisations still have a long way to go in terms of extending all the facilities available in offices to the employees' homes. Even if everything gets back to the normal again, there are chances that work-from-home stays longer. Some of the big tech firms like Twitter have already announced the same for their employees and many else are yet to follow the same footsteps.

One of the biggest pros of work from home forever could be the end of those threaded work commutes which take a toll on the employees productivity and flexibility. And it's not just about the comfort of workers, remote working practice in a long run can act as a pragmatic approach to cut costs, specially the burden of fixed costs. Real estate needs would be significantly reduced when only a handful of staff would be needed on site. Several corporations and places of business are privy to positional advantage in cities with larger population. Businesses are entitled to pay for it even if that's an inefficient use of capital.

Before the pandemic, Google spent $120 million on the Googleplex, it's Mountain View headquarters and a billion more on its adjoining office park while long back, Apple spent $5 billion on the Apple Park for its 13000 employees. These companies have most access to the technology, allowing the jobs to be outsourced and automated but is spending billions of dollars on the offices just for displaying prestige and advertising appeal? Well, no.The main idea was to create an atmosphere where more and more people could get a chance to run into each other and exchange ideas. The purpose was to pull out all the stops in order to engineer serendipity.

As of now, due to remote working scenario, classic serendipity is out of reach for the budding startups. While they are exploring the feasibility of prolonging the work from home period to cut costs, their struggle with cash flow and funding still continues amidst the pandemic. While currently, the startups funding can be challenging, it's not all doom and gloom. Afterall, Microsoft and Apple were found during the 1970s recession and Airbnb during 2008 recession.

Some sectors like e-commerce and OTT platforms have been blooming recently just the same way digital payment platforms did after demonetization. Similarly, digitalising serendipity will pick up more urgency where video conferencing will get better. Some companies will claim that their product fosters the unscripted moments in most innovative ways, blind to the demographics. Because if the engineers and venture capitalists are geographically disbanding and working via cloud, digital serendipity seems like the future.

With the operational costs being cut by the companies, layoffs will rise, specially for the low wage workers. Although newer jobs would be created as well.

It's not going to be just work from home, it's going to be work from anywhere as long as you have good connectivity. With the freedom to locate yourself anywhere, it won't matter whether you are working on your couch or working while enjoying your vacation side by side. With the freedom of hiring outside the corporate hub headquarters, organisations can find a bigger pool of qualified talent across the world. No one knows for sure what the future would exactly look like with such norms implemented but cost saving, diversified workforce and increased productivity may act like a win-win for the companies.

- Ankita Singh