A pandemic redefines jobs

The outbreak of the pandemic has forced companies into possibly a most meaningful social experiment in the future of work, while social distancing has affected fundamentally the way we collaborate and interact. It has changed not only where we work but also what we do and how we do it.

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Many employees now perform tasks they could previously not even have imagined. Examples are textile and clothing companies, which have shifted almost overnight to manufacturing protective equipment. Food companies in turn are producing disinfectants, and IT companies, for instance, are developing platforms to allow small retailers to sell online while their brick-and-mortar store is closed.

The current situation is actually an excellent opportunity to start reorganising jobs and let employees take on various responsibilities in order better to respond to the evolving needs of companies and customers. It is also an ideal moment for agile transformation, about which so much has been written. How to prepare for it?

Distribute work across the organisation

Transfer your staff as quickly as possible to the most critical activities to keep your business running. For example, in response to the coronavirus crisis, Bank of America has temporarily moved more than 3,000 employees across the organisation to customer service positions so as to handle the onslaught of calls from consumers and businesses.

If you can promptly connect the right talent with the job opportunities on offer, you can solve upcoming business challenges in real time. Many organisations, such as Allianz Global Investors and Cisco, have created "internal project marketplaces" that divide work into tasks and projects which can be connected to available people with the right skills from anywhere in the organisation. These "marketplaces" allow people who suddenly find themselves without their usual work tasks to find another job quickly and easily thanks to their skills. It will also provide a great opportunity for further learning, not to mention the benefits for the whole company.

Deconstructing tasks into sub-tasks also makes it easier to monitor what workload people can do remotely and that needs to be addressed in the workplace.

Speed ​​up automation

In fact, in today's economic environment, automation is not a job killer; on the contrary, it is becoming a necessity to deal with the crisis. For some types of work, automation can increase reliability, improve safety, and help handle the sudden increase in demand.

Many service companies have introduced automation software in recent weeks to enable employees remotely to operate, monitor and control systems for the smooth running of utilities without service interruption. Automation also helps to cope with the increased influx of calls in customer centres.

Share your employees in inter-company talent exchanges

Sharing talent between industries is an amazing experience for both employees and employers. For example, one American supermarket chain temporarily recruited employees of Sysco Corporation, a wholesale distributor of food for restaurants, which have been hit hard by coronavirus, to work in stores for several weeks. A number of other companies facing the onslaught of demand have done likewise and created additional jobs for temporary workers.

 

Although the Covid-19 pandemic is a difficult period, it can also be a time of unprecedented creativity. Redefining jobs in response to the current situation will ultimately help build greater resilience and efficiency in organisations.

 

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Article source Harvard Business Review - flagship magazine of Harvard Business School
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