Impact of Covid-19 & adapting to office virtualisation

Q1:

What strategic areas should companies adopt to compete and stay relevant in today’s scenario?

Some of the strategic areas, companies need to focus are –

Survive today to be able to fight another day – Innovate, keep the supply chain tight, stay relevant to customer requirements & expectations, brands that remain loyal to their customers today are going to be tomorrow’s winners.

Speed & ability to pivot will be key – focus should be on staying ahead of the recovery curve, agility to quickly understand the changed customer expectations and respond, all internal departments and processes should be completely focussed to this end. Understand supply risks, be more GLocal (think global, act local).

Piggyback on technology enablers; focus on achieving customer delight and not on technology fads – Success of almost all technology enablers - Digitalisation, Analytics, RPA, IoT, AI – is dependent on (a) access and availability of CLEAN enterprise data, (b) clarity of business requirements (unfortunately the tactical implementation hogs most of the limelight).

Stay humane and respect relationships – No algorithm or technology has been able to replace the Emotional Quotient (EQ). Organisations, need to remember that we are social creatures and that relationships actually make our world go round!

Q2:

What are the challenges, an employee is facing today in times of office virtualisation?

Q3:

In your view, what’s the most important advice to leaders, managing virtual teams.

That would be Social/Behavioural – Avoid micromanaging, meeting flooding, hourly phone checks on employees instead trust your employees and focus on the achievement of objectives. Respect PTOs, WFH and time-off’s do not mean one and the same things. Be innovative with fun things that teams can do online, together!

Q4:

Do you see any specific benefits to the – organisation and, the individual benefits – due to office virtualisation?

Organisational – With organisations taking up virtual working seriously, some of them targeting up to 75% reduction in office working; may see dramatic reduction in traffic congestion, positive environmental impacts, more realistic relationship between demand and supply instead of unbridled commercialisation of real estate resources.

Individual – If done right in keeping personal/private lives separate; we will be able to give valuable time back to our kids/spouses rather than stuck in traffic.

Q5:

Has the industry over reacted in terms of WFH today? Is this a temporary measure or a permanent one? Thoughts.

I believe, the industry will evaluate and arrive to a more realistic percentage. But, for sure that percentage is going to be way greater than what it used to be pre-COVID. Managements will try and figure out the synergies from office virtualisation and re-focus the freed-up resources to develop more customer specific value-adds, better research & development and more resilient supply chains, hopefully.

RELATED TOPICS:#Supply Chain,covid-19,virtual offices,new normal,technology,pandemic,worklife,Procurement,Gaurav Kumar