A lockdown is an emergency protocol that usually prevents people or information from leaving an area. The protocol can usually only be initiated by someone in a position of authority. During the Covid 19 pandemic crisis, many countries resorted to lockdown and Zimbabwe with no exception. This was done to combat the spread of the corona virus. Most of the companies resorted to remote working especially those in the service sector. Here are some of the effects of the move.
As a result of the advances in online communication and collaboration tools, remote work is becoming increasingly common and in this case, it is forced.
Increased employee motivation
This practice offers many benefits to employees and businesses alike: Employees gain flexibility, avoid long commutes which significantly impact job satisfaction) and remain free from office distractions. Many workers view telecommuting as a job perk, with more than half seeking the arrangement as a way to improve work-life balance. People choose to work remotely to avoid daily commutes.
Organisations now see the impotence of automating every possible process
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Automation is a necessity in industries because it not only seeks improve the quality of life for humans at both home and work, it allows the distribution of both quality products and services to be made available at faster rates, and reduces down time and human error. It is what is currently propping up our world's distribution chains.
The greater all industries access to Automation, the greater our lives become on the whole. The robots are not going to take over the world, despite some’s fears. As long as we keep building them, they are going to keep on breaking.
Organisations were reminded about precautionary savings
In economic theory, specifically Keynesian economics, precautionary demand is one of the determinants of demand for money, the others being transactions demand and speculative demand. The precautionary demand for money is the act of holding real balances of money for use in a contingency. As receipts and payments cannot be perfectly foreseen, people hold precautionary balances to minimize the potential loss arising from a contingency. With this pandemic crisis, some organisations are now struggling to even cover salaries for their employees because of hand to mouth.
Help in culture change
In remote working, employees need to prove that they are working through daily updates. This improves the situation where employees just go to work for the purpose of being present. Nudging can also be of great importance as it makes people accountable. Because people care about what others think, tie nudges to some form of third-party accountability. That does not mean making people check in with their boss. It could be having employees pair up as goal friends and commit to regular check-ins to see what progress they are making towards the goal. Alternatively, use a group email, text, or mobile application to post results on a digital leaderboard that everyone can see.
Managers have a clear understanding of important positions within their organisations.
In most cases, some organisations have positions which were created about fifty years ago and their relevance has come to an end. This can be detected by analyzing daily updates. Redundancy is a situation in which a service from a certain job role becomes less relevant in the business environment. When managers notice that. They can get guided by job evaluation. Job evaluation has a module called job analysis which will help to understand certain roles. This is normally a sourced service from experts. For more information on job evaluation you can visit www.ipcconsultants.com.
Negative Impacts of remote working
Isolation could kill you
Isolation is often the biggest problem with remote working. You do not get out as much as when you have to go to your office. Just being surrounded by strangers in public transport gives us a feeling of being part of the society. There are no coworkers next to us for a quick chat. Some people tend to get up late, skip the shower and don’t leave the house all day. Simply because there is no need to. In the long run, this results in feeling very isolated and lonely. Dr. Dhruv Khuller, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, is convinced, that the effects of loneliness on our health are only slightly less strong than smoking or obesity. Therefore, it even has a very complicated effect on mortality, too.
You cannot turn off
As a remote worker, your home office is open 24/7. Whenever you have something to do, you can do it. Your laptop is just right next to you, so you end up working more. As an example, for programmers there are no after work hours or weekends. They find it hard to set clear boundaries between work and their private life. It often overlaps and become one. While this work-private-life relationship may be ok for a while, many remote workers will feel stressed after a while. The lack of personal time can result in a dissatisfaction, tiredness, exhaustion, and eventually even depression.
Nyasha D Ziwewe is a Business Consultant and Systems developer at Industrial Psychology Consultants. Email: nyasha@ipcconsultants.com. Mobile 0783462251. LinkedIn: Nyasha D Ziwewe