Employment Ecosystem Changing After Covid-19: This Is What’s Happening

Employment Ecosystem Changing After Covid19: This Is What’s Happening It seems to have happened overnight. Economies were booming, people were going about their business as usual, giving very little importance to news emerging from Wuhan in China of a deadly coronavirus outbreak. But things changed after infections spread around the globe, leaving people confined within the four walls of their homes and organizations frantically facilitating remote work opportunities for them. Worse, as resources dried up and no work was generated, companies collapsed or pruned staff, leaving millions without jobs.

In a recent survey, the National Statistical Office (NSO) revealed that India's unemployment rate for all ages increased to 10.3% during the OctoberDecember 2020 period, as compared to 7.9% in the corresponding months a year ago.

In the April-June 2021 period the attrition rate in the IT sector was the highest among all industries in India at 8.03%. Educational services followed at 7.45% and knowledge process outsourcing at 7.38%, according to the employment outlook report of TeamLease Services.

The problems seem to be never-ending. The pandemic means restricted freedom. People who take travel and physical interactions for granted cannot move about freely. The need for health and wellness measures have also increased manifold as rising numbers of COVID-19 infections spread fear, giving rise to more cases of depression and anxiety. With jobs lost, people are also left with no purchasing power, because of which consumer behaviour is changing.

Struggling to stay afloat, most organisations are trying to second-guess future work scenarios and are putting strategies in place to counter any adversity that’s likely to crop up.

200 million and growing Amid the chaos, however, governments and organisations are seriously considering how gig economies can save the situation. It’s about time they do so. Around 200 million people are estimated to be working in gigs around the

world, with developing countries employing between 5% and 12% gig workers and developed economies (between 1% and 4%), mostly in lowerincome jobs such as food and other deliveries, rideshare cabs, etc.

According to a report titled Unlocking the Potential of the Gig Economy in India by the Boston Consulting Group in partnership with the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, the gig economy could create approximately one million net new jobs over the next two to three years by aligning near-term incentives of employers and workers.

The full potential of the gig economy of up to 90 million jobs could be achieved through evolution in industry hiring practices and growing familiarity with and optimization of gig-based services, the report adds.

Huge potential in India Around 500 million people are estimated to be in India’s workforce today. Of this, about 210 million work in the agriculture and allied sectors, and about 290 million in the non-farm sectors. This includes about 62 million in construction and real estate, 60 million in manufacturing and utilities, 47 million in retail and 25 million in transportation and logistics, states the report.

Aiming to explore gig work opportunities across all sectors, the report estimates that the gig economy has the potential to service up to 90 million jobs in the non-farm economy, transact over $250 billion in volume of work, and contribute an incremental 1.25% (approximately) to India's GDP over the long term.

Gig work, therefore, has great potential to kick start the economy in a postCOVID-19 scenario. In the long term, the BCG report reads, 35 million skilled and semi-skilled jobs could be created within industry sectors The report says that around five million job opportunities will exist in the fields of facility management, transportation, and accounting. An estimated 12 million people could be hired to meet the household demand for services.

Various sectors of the economy could account for 37 million unskilled jobs.

Big industries, bigger opportunities

Most importantly, the four largest industry sectors – construction, manufacturing, retail, and transportation and logistics could generate over 70 million potentially ‘gigable’ jobs.

The gig economy will have existing jobs that will migrate to gig platforms.

New opportunities will also be created, the report adds, forecasting that soon enough about 24 million jobs could potentially migrate to technology-based gig platforms.

Despite COVID-18 disruptions, the report says, workers have a positive perception and outlook towards gig work. About 40% of skilled workers and 32% of non-graduates also say they are willing to take up gig work.

Concerns, however, exist around some pain points, which include work assurance, timely payments, learning and personality development, and regular salary increments, the report adds.

Accelerating workforce trends Meanwhile, when it comes to the current COVID-19 environment, the most obvious move of organisations has been to accelerate workforce trends such as adoption of automation and digitization. This is pushing demand for contractors and gig workers, and more remote work, indicates a McKinsey survey of business executives to assess the impact of the pandemic.

The survey released in June 2020 points to an acceleration in workforce trends such as adoption of automation and digitization, increasing demand for contractors and gig workers, and more remote work.

McKinsey surveyed 800 executives from eight countries working in a range of industries based in the United States, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Spain, and the United Kingdom. They were from all kinds of businesses, many from firms with less than $1 billion in revenues, and the others from companies with revenues of $1 billion to $10 billion and those with revenues over $10 billion.

Understanding the need for work more efficiently and streamline all processes, organizations are now taking advantage of the COVID-19 disruption to fast-track transformations. Two years ago, transformations were taking time. Now, things are progressing quickly. About 85% respondents in

McKinsey’s survey say their companies have accelerated “the implementation of technologies that digitally enable employee interaction and collaboration, such as videoconferencing and filesharing.”

Increasing digitisation Roughly half of those surveyed say they have witnessed increasing digitization of customer channels through ecommerce, mobile apps, or chatbots. About 35% say they have digitized their supply chains, for instance, by connecting their suppliers with digital platforms in supply chain management.

As contactless interaction has become the norm during the pandemic, automation that includes robotics, autonomous vehicles, and AI-driven software is getting to be increasingly attractive as social distancing and hygiene get to be the norm. Machines have their advantages – they don’t need special benefits and can work without a cigarette break. With most countries facing a slowdown after the pandemic, introducing machines in the working environment will mean fewer humans at work, eliminating the need for workspace, additional costs in healthcare and other benefits.

On recent changes, McKinsey reports that a US-based clothing company put robots at work to sort out clothes in warehouses when online orders surged.

Towards the end of 2020, IBM reported a demand for Watson Assistant, its AI driven platform for chatbots and other services which allow customer interactions without contact.

Amazon and Alibaba’s plans to increase investments in cloud services also point to the fact that they foresee increased demand related to changes in the workplace post-COVID. Source View:- https://begig.wordpress.com/2021/10/29/employmentecosystem-changing-after-covid-19-this-is-whats-happening/