My friend added to the end of the litany of his recent exasperations a succinct phrase, his final punctuating comment, which would echo in my head for many months to follow. “You know, Bill, this pandemic isn’t done with us yet.”
The previous global pandemic with the misnomer of the “Spanish Flu” visited our planet in the early decades of the 20th Century. It was one of the deadliest in human history with over 50 million succumbing to it worldwide. Its impacts, according to summarized studies, included a significant overall global population decline, reverberating economic repercussions, new outlooks on health and hygiene, some major advancements in medical care, and even changes to the landscape of the arts and culture. Notice, very little mention of “work” from those historians and commentators.
Another lesson from that previous pandemic, according to most historians, is that the waves and ripples of impact from this terrible catastrophe unfolded for years following the easing of deaths and relative control of the virus that had been unleashed. In fact, those impacts were never seen as temporary, but instead were lasting. There was never a predominant sentiment for a return to any previous conditions, no impulses to “get things back to normal.” There may be some lessons in that for us.
Our more recent pandemic was less severe, at least by some metrics. There were just over 15 million deaths, by most calculations. A tragedy, certainly, but only about a third of the deaths from a hundred years ago. The scientific advances from the previous pandemic and since enabled a rapid development of an effective vaccine, its deployment, and a relatively rapid end to the isolationist measures initially adopted to limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
Perhaps it is the relative speed in confronting this most recent pandemic that has seemed to foster the impulse to think and talk about “getting things back to normal.” Maybe we have enough distance now from the tragedy and disruption to adopt a mindset that there will not be any “getting back to normal.” Our future is new. Period.
In addition to the many ways that this experience of the COVID-19 has transformed our world, one element is clearly evident: the nature and patterns and place of work in our lives has changed. That impact may have not been a dominant issue a hundred years ago, but it is clearly one today, even acknowledging our biased vantage from our place in the workplace design market segment. So, what has changed about work?
Let’s start with technology. The pandemic forced us to employ emerging technologies, especially video connectivity, far more pervasively and with greater effectiveness. We are also learning, or at least beginning to recognize, that video linkages are not an equivalent swap for face-to-face communications. The elements of that issue are a column unto itself. Suffice it to say that sweeping assumptions about Zoom replacing everyone’s travel budgets and office presence as no longer necessary are about as flimsy as we should have expected. And that’s just one technology to highlight. Document creation (synchronous and asynchronous), editing, storage, and processing is another significant impact.
Related to the new leveraging of technology, the pandemic has brought a more intense and welcome focus on the process of work. Many organizations are now asking crucial questions about how their work flows through their company structures and what outcomes create the most value for their business model and their customers. The disruption of these recent years has shone a revealing light on some work processes that were ineffective, overly habitual, and maybe even hindrances to the success of their enterprises.
Perhaps most relevant for our profession, the pandemic has prompted the re-examination of the workplace itself. What does it contribute to the growth and development of the people who spend time there? To the overall organizational success and bottom line? To company culture? A wider range of people are asking for a clearer value proposition for the workplace itself, and if it’s valuable what should be its features, functionalities, and attraction — really good issues to examine, and far more important than mere blather about the misnomer “hybrid work.”
Finally, the pandemic has raised the important question of the role of work itself in our worldview and in the everyday meaning of our lives. What personal needs does work meet for us and for our society? What role does it play among the other ingredients in our lives? Big questions that demand multi-faceted answers. A friend who is a philosophy professor is even writing a book on the philosophical foundations of the idea of work, primarily prompted by what he has seen emerge from the pandemic. Aristotle meets workplace design.
The worst of the pandemic may be past, but the best of the impacts from it are just emerging. It’s time we saw the pandemic as not so much an event to have survived and from which we are recovering but instead the recasting of the very horizon of our lives. It’s the difference between a nostalgic longing for the way things used to be and an excited embrace of the unanswered questions raised above, and plenty more. Let’s reject nostalgia and welcome the new horizons.