With billions of people staying home, the demand for unpaid work — cooking, cleaning, and childcare — has surged. Women already did about three quarters of that work; in the pandemic, the breakdown is even more lopsided.
Of course, the paid and unpaid economies are intimately connected. The unpaid work women do is one of the biggest barriers they face to reaching their potential in the workforce. The solutions lie with governments, employers and families committed to doing things more equitably. What we can say with certainty is that the sudden shift to distributed work has provided a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reimagine everything about how we do our jobs and how we run our companies.
Every leader believes they can do better, and things can move faster: this is their chance. Our Future Forum research of 4, knowledge workers found the majority never want to go back to the old way of working. All this change in our methods will go hand-in-hand with a change in our tools.
Of course, we think Slack has an important role to play as a new kind of headquarters for a digital first world, but the opportunities for digital transformation are expansive and wide-ranging. Businesses that do it well will drive engagement, achieve organisational agility, maintain alignment and empower teamwork across all disciplines and locations. They will have a competitive advantage in this new era of work.
Commuters will gain an hour back on average in their day and estimates suggest that post pandemic, some portion of the week will involve working from home — from one to three days a week. A hybrid model is likely to emerge that will try to balance the efficiencies gained by remote work with the benefits of social interactions and to creativity and innovation generated by working in person with others.
The decline in daily commuters as well as business travel has a knock-on effect on those whose jobs support and serve these workers and offices. A full one-in-four workers are in the transportation, food service, cleaning and maintenance, retail and personal care industries. These jobs, often concentrated in cities and lower paid, are disappearing or are at risk of disappearing in the near term.
We need to shore up the social safety net and invest in ways to further skills and increase access to education and training for our most vulnerable workers. More than half of the global workforce is working remotely and as the pandemic continues to threaten health, we are looking at a prolonged period of hybrid working — from home and office in different proportions. Some lessons learned: we can accomplish most tasks remotely without significant drop in productivity or quality.
Most employees appreciate flexibility, especially those with long commute times. Over time, however, face-to-face interaction is required to facilitate collaboration, build relationships, solve complex challenges and generate ideas. Continuous remote work extends the work day, diffuses work-life boundaries and reduces mental wellbeing. Given these pros and cons, organisations have to rethink their working arrangements. This re-calibration will eventually settle on a sustainable new normal, likely a hybrid workforce and distributed workplace.
Two, the teams are virtual ready. Managers know how to manage, coach, collaborate, evaluate performance and motivate their team remotely.
Three, the technology enables multiple modes of working. Data is saved on cloud; access and security are tailored for different working modes; and applications allow seamless virtual collaborations.
Four, the culture prioritises trust and belonging. Interpersonal bonds are formed with intent and care. The economic shock caused by the pandemic is making even more pressing some of the questions about the economy that many people had already started to ask. Another is the terrifying decline in environmental indicators from extreme weather events and loss of biodiversity — both threatening food supplies — to polluted air and the consequences for human health.
I would highlight an underlying question about the role of the state in the economy. We have grown used to the idea that government and markets are separate spheres, and the market generally knows best. Yet in the crisis responses across the world, we have a demonstration of how dramatically governments can intervene in managing the economy. It might take years for the state role to unwind even if a government wanted to do so.
But, with a focus on new infrastructure investment and green transition, on establishing job schemes, on making up for the educational deficit due to disrupted learning through and beyond and on supporting key industries such as travel and the arts, I think there will be a lasting change in perceptions of the role of the state.
Now that the world is familiar with video communications, the way businesses and individuals communicate and connect will be forever changed. Healthcare, education, finance and businesses large and small are growing and improving with the help of video communications. This year alone, hundreds of thousands of small business owners — yoga and piano instructors, therapists, accountants and others — maintained and even grew businesses using video to connect with customers. Other companies will use video communications to be completely remote.
Both models will enjoy increased productivity and deeper collaboration, and the ability to attract a more diverse workforce. Long-term remote work has completely reshaped the 9-to-5 and blurred the lines between home and office.
The future of work will be distributed. GitHub has been a predominantly distributed company with people working across the globe, which has helped us learn and evolve quickly. Remote by default will also force people to reframe the way they communicate and connect with people at work. Those whose superpower is connecting with people live and bringing energy to conversations will need to become good written communicators. And companies who do not have a strict need for physical interaction are going to have to operate more like open source communities — distributed, asynchronously and online.
We will quickly see a material shift in who succeeds in this new mode of working. The last few months has seen a great deal of media hype about new ways of working — the dispersed office and working from home.
No more of the drudgery of the morning commute, the arrival home exhausted long after the children have been put to bed. Alas, it is all hype. We have forgotten that we tried it 20 years ago and very quickly gave it up. At the time, big business with expensive London real estate spotted it as a way of radically reducing their overheads.
A round of golf over lunch, and collecting the kids from school… what could be better? First, the work place is a social environment and business in any form is a social phenomenon. Work groups quickly lose focus, and the sense of belonging — and of commitment to the organisation and its aims and objectives — is very quickly lost.
Second, we have been in the midst of a loneliness epidemic among the somethings for the better part of the last two decades. It is a particular problem for young new graduates moving to an unfamiliar city on their first job. With no family or friends nearby, work is the only place they can find friends and arrange social events. Third, the digital world of Zoom and Skype is no substitute for face-to-face meetings. It is easy to hide away reading your emails and newsfeed.
People find the virtual environment awkward and very quickly get bored. There is a very strict limit on the size of natural conversations at four people. Anything bigger, and it becomes a lecture dominated by a handful of extraverts. Even as modern organisation are challenged by attracting, retaining and promoting talented employees, they underutilise one major source of available talent: women. Women account for half of all entry-level employees, yet they compose only a third of senior managers and a fifth of C-suite executives.
One of the reasons women have a harder time advancing professionally is that they are much more likely than men to prioritise their family responsibilities over their careers. Giving employees more flexibility in choosing when and where they work can increase gender equality via two pathways. First, research has long established that remote work can help mothers better balance their work and family responsibilities, which makes them less likely to sacrifice one for the other.
Second, data collected during the pandemic suggests that working from home may also make the father more involved.
More couples share family responsibilities more equally now than they did before the pandemic, according to a survey of American couples.
In a survey of Canadian fathers, a majority report doing more household chores and spending more time with their children now than they did before the pandemic. If organisations continued to offer remote work opportunities after the pandemic is over, more women will have a level playing field.
I have in mind those who are comfortably working from home, even rediscovering old loves such as cooking or sketching , honing new skills many are baking and so on. There are signs of this across economic classes. Even the admittedly small fraction of domestic workers who continued to be paid through the lockdown were restless to resume work.
With WFH people have continued to enjoy the economic value of work, but they still feel like there is a hole in their lives. Unfortunately, that has not happened. For those who are able, remote work has allowed people to do their jobs in secluded areas outside of cities.
Cycling is one mode — in a compact city like Boston, anyway — that can benefit from rethinking the commute, Voulgaris said. Cyclists have been hitting the streets in force. Online retail giant Amazon, on the other hand, has reported record profits, while electronics seller Best Buy reported increased second-quarter sales due to online purchases driven by home office needs. Some — mainly online — retailers have weathered the storm well, while others, particularly big-box, brick-and-mortar retailers that were already struggling with online competition, have seen declines accelerate dramatically as customers were locked out of stores.
Mall-based retailers, already part of a decade-long downward trend, are in serious trouble, Lal said. While they were closed during the shutdown, their customers shopped online, including some who had been uncomfortable buying online. That might mean digitizing as much of their operations as possible and reducing contact during checkout.
Longer-term success may depend on rethinking shopping, offering an in-person, window-shopping type of experience coupled with ordering items online, with the expectation from the start that some will be returned. That slowing recovery — August sales rose just 0.
Without a renewal of those benefits, he said, retailers will face a difficult fall, since cash-strapped consumers may put off purchases until Christmas. When they do buy, Lal said, the shifting office environment — with so much activity now remote and online — means some clothing categories will suffer more than others.
Formalwear in particular has taken a beating. Everything related to dressing up will be hit quite significantly. It may also be that time is running out on large, department-store-style retailers, Lal said. In Europe, he said, retailing in the many boutique-style neighborhood stores is healthy, which may bode well for the smaller stores in U.
A downside of the globalized economy became clear as the pandemic struck the U. Personal protective equipment, much of which had been made in China, was in short supply last spring. Without it, hospitals and emergency workers were forced to scramble, innovating new designs and homemade alternatives that drew on volunteer labor, 3D printers, ingenuity, and more than a little desperation. Then the lack of inventory starts to bite the other way. In fact, he said, an argument could be made that with the global economic downturn, they are a greater draw than ever, with millions out of work and short on money.
Demand as the pandemic struck likely outstripped production capacity anywhere — or everywhere — by more than 20 times for products like N95 medical masks. No manufacturer would build a factory with that much surge capacity in order to let it sit idle, awaiting the next pandemic. Will you pay for it? If the global economic collapse showed anything, it is the danger of relying on one major supplier for key products.
The use of cash in financial transactions has long been on the decline, with the FDIC reporting in that it was used in just 30 percent of all payments, according to an article by Shelle Santana , assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School.
On March 1, about 8 percent of U. As with other COVID-driven changes, those proved temporary and the percentage of effectively cashless businesses fell by the middle of June to just under 20 percent. Santana and Chacon expect the numbers of cashless businesses to roughly track the pandemic, rising and falling according to local conditions.
They said the numbers will also be affected by business adaptations that bring customers back through the doors — or to recently installed drive-up windows — where using cash is again an option. As the pandemic fades, Santana expects a return to a more cash-friendly normal, but not back to where it stood in February. Instead of 8 percent of U. By John R. Allen , the president of the Brookings Institution, a retired U. Forces in Afghanistan. Every nation, and increasingly every individual, is experiencing the societal strain of this disease in new and powerful ways.
Inevitably, those nations that persevere—both by virtue of their unique political and economic systems, as well as from a public health perspective—will claim success over those who experience a different, more devastating outcome. To some, this will appear as a great and definitive triumph for democracy, multilateralism, and universal health care.
To some, this will appear as a great and definitive triumph for democracy. Either way, this crisis will reshuffle the international power structure in ways we can only begin to imagine. COVID will continue to depress economic activity and increase tension between countries. Over the long term, the pandemic will likely significantly reduce the productive capacity of the global economy, especially if businesses close and individuals detach from the labor force.
This risk of dislocation is especially great for developing nations and others with a large share of economically vulnerable workers. The international system will, in turn, come under great pressure, resulting in instability and widespread conflict within and across countries.
By Laurie Garrett , a former senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations and a Pulitzer Prize winning science writer. The coronavirus pandemic will therefore not only have long-lasting economic effects, but lead to a more fundamental change. Globalization allowed companies to farm out manufacturing all over the world and deliver their products to markets on a just-in-time basis, bypassing the costs of warehousing. Inventories that sat on shelves for more than a few days were considered market failures.
Supply had to be sourced and shipped on a carefully orchestrated, global level. COVID has proven that pathogens can not only infect people but poison the entire just-in-time system. Given the scale of financial market losses the world has experienced since February, companies are likely to come out of this pandemic decidedly gun-shy about the just-in-time model and about globally dispersed production.
The result could be a dramatic new stage in global capitalism, in which supply chains are brought closer to home and filled with redundancies to protect against future disruption. By Richard N. Many countries will have difficulty recovering, with state weakness and failed states becoming even more prevalent. I would expect many countries will have difficulty recovering from the crisis, with state weakness and failed states becoming an even more prevalent feature of the world.
The crisis will likely contribute to the ongoing deterioration of Sino-American relations and the weakening of European integration. On the positive side, we should see some modest strengthening of global public health governance.
The United States will no longer be seen as an international leader. This is something the United States could have organized, showing that while it is self-interested, it is not solely self-interested. Washington has failed the leadership test, and the world is worse off for it.
By Nicholas Burns , a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a former under secretary for political affairs in the U. State Department. Its depth and scale are enormous. The public health crisis threatens each of the 7. The financial and economic crisis could exceed in its impact the Great Recession of Each crisis alone could provide a seismic shock that permanently changes the international system and balance of power as we know it. That provides hope that men and women around the world can prevail in response to this extraordinary challenge.
To date, international collaboration has been woefully insufficient. If the European Union cannot provide more targeted assistance to its million citizens, national governments might take back more power from Brussels in the future.
In the United States, what is most at stake is the ability of the federal government to provide effective measures to stem the crisis. In every country, however, there are many examples of the power of the human spirit—of doctors, nurses, political leaders, and ordinary citizens demonstrating resilience, effectiveness, and leadership.
The pandemic will change the economic and financial order forever. We asked nine leading global thinkers for their predictions. The pandemic is transforming urban life. We asked 12 leading global experts in urban planning, policy, history, and health for their predictions.
Travel and tourism will be changed forever. We asked seven leading thinkers for their predictions. Other installments include:. Stiglitz, Robert J. Shiller, Gita Gopinath, Carmen M. Walt, Alexandra Wrage.
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