Life has significantly changed a few months after Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic. Individuals experience lockdowns, unemployment, virtual learning as well as remote work. Additionally, people have experienced new realities like long lines as well as empty shelves. Additionally, wearing face coverings, maintaining social distance, and quarantining were newly adopted norms as nations worked to flatten the curve. The disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic has also contributed to major changes in how businesses conduct their activities. From in-person essential workers maintaining the world turning behind plexiglass to workers changing to remote working, workplaces have shifted to these trying moments. Organizations are continually traversing creative business models that work to ensure the safety of workers and customers’ safety while abiding by altering regional restrictions. This paper illustrates the management observations of in-person essential workers and those of remote or hybrid non-essential workers and the impact of these changes on the new managerial norms in the going and post-pandemic world.
During the Covid-19 pandemic that swept the entire world, there were notable observations regarding social inequalities between different groups of workers. Many businesses opted to close, contributing to many workers losing their jobs. The remaining individuals started experiencing new challenges that differed by social as well as economic class (Gaitens et al.). For instance, various middle and upper-income employees, like individuals in the technology industry, were able to change their working environment to work from their homes (Gaitens et al.). The workers in the essential industries who received low wages were not provided with an opportunity of working from their homes. These posed these essential workers a great risk to Covid-19.
Moreover, the young migrants and the low educated low-wage employees were overrepresented in activities that needed not to be conducted remotely, thereby exposing them to a high risk of Covid-19 (OECD). Many of these essential workers who performed these at-risk jobs were the workers who continued working within their physical workplace and were in contact with other individuals during the pandemic (OECD). To deliver essential services as well as goods. The pandemic has shown the extent to which society relies on frontline workers, mostly employed in low-paying jobs whose quality aligns with neither the significance of the work nor the risks involved.
During the pandemic, remote or hybrid non-essential workers in various states in the United States were required to stay at their homes to minimize the spread of the pandemic. A study conducted by Yang et al. indicates that the change to firm-wide remote work made the business groups in Microsoft less interconnected. Additionally, the change minimized the ties connecting structural holes within the organization’s informal collaboration network and made non-essential remote workers spend less time collaborating with the remaining bridging ties (Yang et al.). Moreover, the change to remote work made non-essential remote workers use a greater part of their collaboration time with their stronger ties that are better positioned to the transfer of information and a smaller part of their time with weak ties that are likely to offer access to new information (Yang et al.). This implies that the network topology of the non-essential workers working remotely was greatly affected by the pandemic, including the strength of their ties.
The reduction in the levels of productivity of non-essential remote workers is a significant issue with the change to working remotely. Managers were able to track employees’ advancements before the pandemic and were able to keep an eye on the remote workers. These could guarantee the manager that goals were achieved and that there was a greater output. This has significantly changed during and in the post-pandemic world. There was a need to adopt new software like VoicePing that could be used to ensure that remotely working employees could maintain high productivity levels.
All these changes for both the essential and non-essential remote workers in the ongoing and post-pandemic world have developed new norms for managerial roles. Only a few workers attend their offices daily, while the majority work remotely fully or possess hybrid schedules (Doheny). Managers currently conduct more surveys as well as check-ins to understand the concerns of their teams and their views. They conduct regular training sessions virtually. Additionally, managers are embracing Zoom calls in the post-pandemic work than before. Managers view compassion as a more essential competence than ever in their roles. Covid-19 welcomes a new way of working, whereby managers have shown a difference by doubling the time for checking in with their teams and asking them how they are progressing in their personal lives and work.
To sum up, Covid-19 changes many things in the business world. Different management observations from the essential and non-essential remote workers were made during the pandemic, which has changed managerial roles in the post-pandemic world. Managers have seen compassion as more important than ever as they have doubled the time for checking in on their workers for their personal lives and work.
Work Cited
Doheny, Kathleen. “How the Pandemic Changed My Management Style.” SHRM, 7 Dec. 2021, www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/people-managers/pages/managing-during-pandemic-.aspx#:~:text=The%20pandemic%20has%20meant%20constant.
Gaitens, Joanna, et al. “COVID-19 and Essential Workers: A Narrative Review of Health Outcomes and Moral Injury.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, vol. 18, no. 4, 4 Feb. 2021, p. 1446, https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18041446.
OECD. “The Unequal Impact of COVID-19: A Spotlight on Frontline Workers, Migrants and Racial/Ethnic Minorities.” OECD, 17 Mar. 2022, www.oecd.org/coronavirus/policy-responses/the-unequal-impact-of-covid-19-a-spotlight-on-frontline-workers-migrants-and-racial-ethnic-minorities-f36e931e/.
Yang, Longqi, et al. “The Effects of Remote Work on Collaboration among Information Workers.” Nature Human Behaviour, vol. 6, no. 6, 9 Sept. 2021, www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01196-4.
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