Coronavirus has gripped nations across the world with fear; where we use to sit in a cubical from 9-6, now you can enjoy the luxury of our cozy couch or bed to work. Amidst all this, the economy of the country and work from home ticket of the IT companies are taking a wrong turn.
While it makes all the sense in the world to stay at home and work, rather than be in a crowded office environment, it’s affecting those small companies whose workers have no idea how to sit at home and make ends meet. It’s affecting the non-IT companies, especially the small and medium enterprises (SMBs), as they have become the worst hit by this pandemic.
Who is it affecting?
All types of small companies, from corporate ones to the educational verticals, as to prevent the spread they have to lockdown. However, work from home has become a pain; the employees need to have new laptops, good network and connectivity with UPS backups. This is for techies, what about manual workers? Like those work which requires a human presence.
How to avoid such a situation?
Well, the easier way would be to quit and halt all operations. However, the more robust side is to continue despite these delirious circumstances.
First, the business needs to shift towards the remote working area after which the non-IT people could be taught how to use the latest devices and apps. Even though the training will take a lot of time, ultimately it will benefit the company only. Although it will hamper the productions of the company a bit in the short run, it’s a win-win for the non-tech companies in the long run. It would allow them to be more prepared in the future, in case such emergencies arise.
Which businesses will survive and why?
Gartner’s latest report shows that about 54 per cent of HR leaders have said that the biggest barrier to effective remote working is nothing but lack of good technology and proper infrastructure.
According to the Senior Director Analyst of Gartner, Sandy Shen, CIOs should try and relook the digital fulfilment of the market demand. Shen says that this should act as a wake-up call to those companies which have previously focused too much on the daily operational needs, now rather concentrating on investing in digital business and long term resilience. This is because amidst all of this disrupts business landscape, the value of digital channels, products and operations is becoming increasingly evident.
Only the flexible businesses and those that invest in digital platforms, will be the least affected companies and the ones which will be successful in future.
“Videoconferencing, messaging, collaboration tools and document sharing are just a few examples of technologies that facilitate remote work. Additional bandwidth and network capacity may also be needed, given the increasing number of users and volume of communications,” said Shen.
Result of work from home
Nasscom, the IT industry’s apex body, has asked the government to loosen their rules a bit and allow employees to opt for work from home, especially for technology and back-office employees. This was done for the safety and preventative measure to deal with the spread of the coronavirus in India.
Cisco, the networking giant, reported that there was a “significant growth” in the usage of their web conferencing and video-conferencing service Webex in India.
Muneer Ahmad, Business Head, ViewSonic India said, “ViewSonic IFP has a cloud-based software which helps teachers and corporates to connect through video conferencing to multiple people at the same time and can split the screen into six. It can also connect with various tools like Skype, Cisco WebEx, Zoom, Google Hangouts and GoToMeeting.”
Not only the education sector and the corporate sector, but also the co-working industry has received a severe hit. The industry is trying to find various ways to tackle it, such as ensuring the supply of juices rich in Vitamin C, the supply of disinfectants along with giving work from home facilities.
As of September 19 report, India has a total of 1,000 co-working locations, making it the second-largest market for the co-working industry, just after China.
As India’s first licensed B2B Virtual Network Operator, CloudConnect Communications offers a collaborative platform that enables companies to overcome the COVID-19 threat while maintaining seamless business flow and optimum employee productivity.
It seems that current coronavirus pandemic threat has opened Indian work culture to another turn, opening new hallways and leaving the traditional style.
