As the COVID-19 virus, more commonly known as the Coronavirus, continues to spread throughout the world, it’s essential to take precautions to minimize your risk of contracting the virus. But the second-most important thing beyond your own health is the health of your business, and to know that, you need to have an idea of how the virus might impact both the present and future of your office.
Effects of Covid-19 Coronavirus on Technology
Here are a few ways that the Coronavirus pandemic might be changing the technology that makes our businesses operate!
1. The Rise of Online Meetings
If you spend much time on social media, you’ve probably seen the complaint that something that was said during a meeting probably could have saved some time by sending it in an e-mail instead.
Meetings might not be heading to that extreme, but there’s a good chance that they’ll be heading toward all-online settings at many workplaces if they’re not there already. Sites like Slack already make it fairly simple for employees to stay in touch with each other throughout the day, so there might be little reason to hold formal meetings are moving forward.
Even if formal meetings still occur, technology continues to dominate the workplace. According to Wavestone US, 82 per cent of millennials consider technology an important factor in deciding whether to accept a new job and holding formal meetings online is a good way to impress these potential employees.
2. Remote Work Becomes the Norm
Have you noticed how many workers have been told to work from home during the spread of the coronavirus? After the threat is over, there’s likely to be a revelation that many workers are just as efficient at home as they are at the office, leading to more companies offering to let their employees telecommute as long as the work still gets done.
With the United States being more of a service economy rather than a manufacturing economy, more workers than ever have the ability to work from home if their employer permits them to do so.
Working from home can be a real perk for employees because it allows them to take care of home responsibilities as well as get the job done — and it means they don’t waste part of their day driving to and from the office. That gives them more time for self-care, and that means happier and more productive workers.
3. Innovation
Out of necessity comes invention, and the necessity of catering to more telecommuters will lead to newer technologies that make that much easier for businesses to manage. For example, newer technologies could make it easier to get work done on smartphones. Right now, many people use their smartphones for entertainment rather than efficiency, but as people become more likely to work from home and connect to their co-workers, we might see a rise in business-oriented phones that make it easier for employees to do their job.
Or perhaps we see innovations with computers that help increase the speeds of typing and creating, allowing you to connect with your clients even faster than you already do. Nobody knows what the future holds, but one thing that people can confidently predict is that the inventors of tomorrow will rise to the challenges created by the changes of today. What they come up with will drastically shape how business gets done.
4. Cash Crunches
The Coronavirus impact on our technology won’t be all good news. Already, technological giants like Facebook and Google are seeing an impact on their bottom line, and uncertainty over the Coronavirus is only going to make that worse. When cash crunches come around, companies get cautious, and that leads business leaders to make tough decisions to remain both efficient and profitable.
Obviously, you can’t sacrifice on the things that make your business stand out from the competition, nor can you cut back on the services that give your customers reason to trust in what you provide.
What you can do is look for ways to get more efficient with your money, and one great way is to optimize the costs of your essential departments. For example, you might choose to work with outside IT consultancy experts, such as Wavestone, who can help provide you with quality IT services at a reasonable rate that cuts back on excess costs.
Or perhaps you noticed an area where your business was paying too much for a necessary service that their competitor can offer you for a few dollars less per month. Whenever and wherever you can cut back on your costs without sacrificing what makes your company unique, it’s a great idea to give it a serious look, especially in these uncertain times.
Conclusion
Regardless of when a vaccine arrives, and the Coronavirus nightmare passes, one thing everyone can expect is that the world of technology will be forever changed by its existence. How your business responds to the changes will play a large role in its future success!
Author: Clare Kelly (She writes about Technology, Social life and its relation to Technology.)
