COVID-19 could change the world of work

Even as the coronavirus pandemic has taken the economy for a toss globally, it has led to the opening up of new avenues for some sectors.

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Among the immediate beneficiaries of lockdown are online education and telemedicine, which are gaining huge popularity. The situation has also led to various industries resorting to working from home to keep their business running.

“As people are locked indoors, they are opting to learn online. Online education sector and telemedicine have advanced by 10 years in just a month. Telemedicine has suddenly gained acceptance,” said Ravi Vishwanath, chief financial officer, Teamlease Services.

Work from Home (WFH) as a concept, which was limited to the IT sector, has suddenly gained acceptance among many other industries. The IT sector has moved almost 80% of its staff to homes. However, to make it work better back-end systems need to be changed with high-speed internet connectivity, says Rabindra Srikantan, managing director, ASM Technologies Ltd.

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He says WFH is here to stay with almost a third of the IT industry working from home in the days to come. The WFH concept is going to be a standard industry practice in the coming days at least for the IT industry. It is expected that a third of the IT professionals will work from their homes henceforth on a daily basis, Srikantan said.

In Bengaluru alone, there are 1.5 million workers in the IT sector, of which at least 5 lakh workers could work from home daily, he said. Overall, the IT sector employs over 4 million workers nationally.

“We have been taking online classes for our students for some days now. However, students are not fully satisfied. Up to 80% satisfaction is achieved in our college. We need very powerful servers, and high-speed internet connections at affordable rates so that students can attend all their classes online,” said Prof Ravindra S Kulkarni, head of the department of Aerospace Engineering, R V Engineering College.

With lockdowns forcing businesses to shut down their shops, e-commerce companies are seeing a surge in orders on their platforms. Unlike in the previous years, e-commerce players are recruiting additional workers for last-mile delivery of goods.

The industry is set to hire 40-50% more to meet the demand. “On an average, e-commerce players recruit around 3,000 workers per month during the summer season. But this year, they are set to hire close to 5,000 workers per month starting May to meet the rush in customer demand,” said Guruprasad, chief operating officer, Quess Corp.

“One of the bigger conversations that is happening as a result of the Covid-19 situation is focused around the future of how we work. This has created a new opportunity to see how workforces can have more flexibility to work from home, or allow for more remote work options in the future, especially if employers see benefits,” said Sashi Kumar, managing director, Indeed India, an employment-related search engine.