Post-COVID Era – The Responsibility of Business Owners Grows with Remote Workplaces

If the Labor Law, as well as other laws such as the Occupational Safety and Health Act, are not adapted to the new trend of working from home, employers will have to ensure occupational safety for remote workplaces. The question is whether they will be able to provide this and whether workers will allow various inspections and assessments of the workplace in residential spaces. And this is not the only problem faced by those sectors where work is not restricted due to epidemiological measures.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, we all hoped that the situation would be short-lived, but it turned out to be long-lasting, and it is uncertain when the life we once knew will return to our daily routine and business. In this text, I would like to reflect on sectors where work is not restricted but which also faced significant challenges during the complete lockdown, challenges that continued into the subsequent period of limited epidemiological measures.

Of course, entrepreneurs whose activities have been banned or significantly restricted face much greater challenges. They may consider the situations outlined below as unimportant and not worthy of being called challenges for entrepreneurship and management because they would be happy to only have to deal with such challenges. However, entrepreneurs whose work was not restricted and who needed to organize uninterrupted work during this time are still struggling with various challenges such as organizing compliance with epidemiological measures in business premises, reorganizing business operations, organizing remote work, ensuring conditions for working from home, demands for mastering new technologies, procuring new equipment at a time when everyone is seeking it, pressures to reduce service prices and/or grant discounts while simultaneously retaining workers’ rights without state financial support because they did not meet the conditions for obtaining it, etc.

Timeliness is Important

As supply lines for procuring masks and disinfectants improved over time, most entrepreneurs supplied their business premises with disinfectants, organized ventilation and cleaning. Fortunately, that problem, which was one of the major issues at the beginning of the pandemic, has become minor, except in terms of cost. Procuring new equipment has become a demanding process as supply chains have been partially disrupted or significantly slowed down due to the pandemic. Stocks in warehouses have decreased, and new goods are arriving on the market with difficulty. This is particularly evident in the procurement of IT equipment and accessories – video conferencing cameras, toners, and similar equipment.

While people were working in offices, not all employees needed to have this equipment as network printers and desktop computers were used, and for video conferencing, equipment was available in meeting rooms or on certain computers. Suddenly, there was a great demand for small portable printers, as every worker who started working from home suddenly needed a printer, a camera for video meetings, etc. Besides IT equipment, disruptions also occurred in the procurement of almost all goods and equipment. Planning procurement and timely orders have once again become important. The need to form stocks in business processes has re-emerged, a practice that had been minimized due to the previous availability of goods and speed of delivery.

Collective Knowledge Has Disappeared

Organizing business operations in circumstances where most employees in sectors where this is possible work from home is not as easy as it seems at first glance. Given that only a small portion of entrepreneurs already had the IT infrastructure that enabled this, it had to be quickly organized and secured, and now the infrastructure is being refined or introduced. In addition to procuring the necessary equipment and ensuring the IT infrastructure that enables remote work, it is necessary to organize the flow of information and task distribution. This has proven to be very demanding.

In most sectors that could work from home, there is collective knowledge that spread throughout the office, and many problems that workers encounter in the office were solved ‘on the go’. Now, when a worker has a problem in performing tasks, it is much harder to find a solution. It is not possible to constantly call a video meeting for all employees to solve immediate problems as they would be resolved in the office. Colleagues are called in turn to determine who knows the solution to the problem, but not everyone is immediately available because some have a client phone call or are busy with other obligations. Therefore, collective emails are sent or groups are formed on chat platforms where various questions are posed. While waiting for a response, work stands still or something else is done, and that task is put aside. Likewise, management finds it harder to obtain information and communication with workers is more difficult.

For these reasons, many have formed teams so that one team is in the office while another works from home. In some companies, they are permanently assigned, while in others, they rotate. This is not an ideal solution, but it is organizationally better. This way, communication with business partners can be organized more easily, as well as among workers and management. Everyone suggests that meetings (remotely) should be held every two weeks, but this is also harder to organize than in the office. For example, some workers struggle to master new technologies, and you cannot provide them with training due to epidemiological measures. In the office, you simply schedule a meeting in advance and hold it, but in the new normal, someone connects, someone cannot connect, someone has internet issues, someone has a computer in the kitchen and cannot join because they have children at home who are in online school and cannot understand that their parents are working from home, etc.

More, but Less

I often hear that working from home is great, but I believe that it does not suit most workers unless they have ideal conditions for it. From the experience of my workers, as well as my own, I know that when working from home, many distractions arise because you cannot ignore the needs of your child or another household member or pet when you are at home, and you automatically allocate your time differently. What you would normally do after working hours is now often done during working hours. These may be small interruptions, but they are constant. Because of them, work extends, and you feel like you are working all day, yet you may be working less effectively than usual. While I was working from home, I couldn’t get started until ten o’clock even though I have a home office because my brain constantly sent signals that I was at home. Maybe I am an isolated case or the only one admitting it.

If the trend continues such that some workers will not return to the office even after the pandemic ends, employers will face new challenges in addition to the previously mentioned problems, and workers will also face new challenges and demands. If the Labor Law, as well as other laws such as the Occupational Safety and Health Act, are not adapted to the new trend, employers will have to ensure occupational safety for remote workplaces. The question is whether employers will be able to provide this and whether workers will allow various inspections and assessments of the workplace in residential spaces.

Onboarding New Workers

Additionally, there is the problem of onboarding new workers into the tasks they should perform. Who will do this if all experienced workers, who usually onboard new workers and transfer knowledge to them, are working from home? In this case, employers will need to prepare online courses for new workers, but these will need to be well-designed so that they are interactive courses for each specific job. If the course is not interactive, it is usually just turned on and listened to, but the knowledge is not mastered. The course should be like leveling up in a video game.

I assume that the IT industry will move in this direction because, in my opinion, it is the only way to bridge this problem, and there will be many demands for applications to onboard workers into jobs. The problem is that these applications cannot be general but must be tailored to the business processes of each individual employer. The base of these courses can be by sectors, e.g., finance, but each company has its processes, software, and ways of working, so adjustments will be necessary. Large companies will find it easier to adapt than small ones, as small companies will find it difficult to bear these costs.

Many multinational companies are already developing such interactive training for both old and new workers. By reviewing these courses, it is evident that internal teams have been significantly involved in their creation because external collaborators or IT specialists could not create these courses independently without internal knowledge. The question remains open as to how introductions to colleagues will be conducted; in general, no one has yet started thinking about these social moments that are also important for the functioning of work organization. Workers need to know each other to form a team. Therefore, I assume that in the future, these problems will need to be addressed if there is a shift towards working from home, and every company will need to approach this seriously.

Different Living Spaces

Workers will also need to adapt significantly if they are to favor working from home. This primarily relates to expanding knowledge and increasing independence in work. Workers who are just entering the job market will find it harder to find a job if work is done from home and they do not have enough knowledge to independently take on the job for which they are hired. Most likely, in this situation, the employer will require that potential workers undergo a series of tests and training before hiring. Additionally, it will be necessary to master new technologies and processes.

For quality work from home, workers should start looking for living spaces that allow such work. You cannot work all the time in the living room or kitchen. If this trend is accepted, I assume that new resumes, along with other standard data, will include information on whether the potential worker can hold remote meetings and share their screen, whether they have a home office where they can isolate themselves while working from home, and whether they require the employer to pay for the rent of that business part of the living space…

I can conclude that working from home is ideal as an occasional arrangement or for those workers who have conditions in their living space and are so independent in their work that they do not need significant interaction with other workers. Working from home will certainly partially persist, but office business will also survive, which will become more flexible and will undergo significant changes. Scenarios should already be prepared for these changes in work environments and processes – if working from home persists as part of the business future.

{embed_digitalno_izdanje}{/embed_digitalno_izdanje}