Coronavirus & The Digital Workplace: Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste
People are dying from coronavirus. That's bad and we should be working our hardest to stop that from happening.
But.
Richard Claydon talks here about the impact of the pandemic on work practices in Asia. My wife is talking about how we would survive isolation in our apartment for 2 weeks (answer: pretty well - apart from the crappy broadband). Everyone is getting very worked up.
I don't know if getting that worked up is justified. But I do know that this is a crisis that will impact working patterns in the short term. If you run a workplace where you need people to physically be there (a factory, a store) then the next few months will not be good for you. But if you are trying to drive a shift to digitally-supported remote working then these cloudy days have a silver, if snotty, lining.
If you have been trying to get your teams to work virtually and have faced serious resistance, now you suddenly have a powerful WIIFM (What's In It For Me): Not dying.
This means that you will have to ramp up your enablement and support activities in the short-term. You may even need to bring on contract staff for this purpose. And while doing all this you will need to be putting in place post-pandemic reinforcement measures - ongoing support, continuous improvement, success stories of effective remote and distributed working.
This may seem a little ghoulish. But opportunities like this don't come along every day - thankfully. That said, there are regular disruptions to work - weather events, transport breakdowns - that digital workplace evangelists should make more of.
Making a business case and implementing a change program is really hard. You need all the help you can get. And if that involves Acts of God then go with it.