Sujit Sahoo
How should you reinvent ‘people’ and ‘work’ in 2021?
The New Workplace
As sweeping business changes become more frequent, learn how HR teams are rising to the challenge
T
he year 2020 was tumultuous. The COVID-19 pandemic caused mass disruption across the world, prompting significant job losses and changes in work patterns. Concurrently, it also earmarked numerous opportunities for business transformation— namely through people rather than processes. As we emerge from the pandemic, it is clear that both remote-first and people-first strategies hold promise. This applies equally to customers and employees, with flexibility taking precedence over physical presence.
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| APRIL 2021
Companies like Amazon have championed this sentiment, proving that remote-first isn’t just viable, in many cases it’s more productive and preferable. People-first and remote-first go hand in hand. This combination is breaking down geographical barriers and increasing the diversity of applicant pools. Simply, if any person can do the work, and do it well, their location is a mere afterthought in the present recruiting environment. The pandemic has proven how talented people across the globe are more within our reach than we thought. Boundaries have been broken, and people themselves take precedence over geographic placement. Going forward, we are likely to see more diverse teams distributed across the globe—achieving great success while replacing the status quo of local recruitment thanks to the widespread adoption of remote collaboration technologies.
Reinventing the workplace
The businesses that have managed to weather the storm of COVID-19 share one thing in common: proactive innovation. These businesses understood that