i3 - September/October 2020 - 21

By now, six months into the COVID-19 upheaval, we have heard forecasts
about what comes next and statistics on how technology and human responses
are changing the way we live and do business. Since spring, we've learned to
rely on Zoom (as well as other video calling tools) and have discovered "Zoom
fatigue," which was virtually unheard of last Christmas.
Depending on your role in the creation, marketing and distribution of
products and services, you've thought about how you'll function in the
erratically evolving new worlds of commerce, education, health and political operations.
But have you considered, for example, the global parts supply chain,
which may affect the availability of new devices or of components needed
for repairs? Or that 70% of managers say that work-from-home (WFH)
staffers perform at or above the levels they do at the office?
On a grander level, sociologists and urban planners are already evaluating how to use today's experiences in smart city development and future
resilience processes. And after countless concept trials and limited deployments, this may be the big moment for virtual reality.

GOING FORWARD

At the same time, the details of 2020 life have raised many questions. How
do you factor the significance of this data point: WFH employees say they
encounter 43 minutes of interruptions per day versus 78 minutes daily
when they're in the office? What about the capability to set up virtual private networks (VPNs) to assure greater security for important communications or the ability to interact with B2B vendors? And will this summer's
boom in low-priced computer sales - presumably for at-home schooling
- lead to future upgrades?
To the great joy of many communications providers and regulators, the
telecom infrastructure has held up well, despite 20% to 40% jumps in
daytime digital traffic (both from work- and school-related activities plus
at-home entertainment video streaming). Monitoring services have occasionally spotted slowdowns in broadband speeds (varied by time and town),
but overall high-speed connections have held up. The big remaining problem, as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Congress and
many public-interest groups continue to complain, is that rural and underserved urban areas are not sufficiently on the broadband highway, unable
to tackle at full strength the WFH, school and other opportunities.
Add in the reality of white-collar jobs - a combination of individual work
plus group meetings. According to Global Workplace Analytics, which has
been monitoring telework for more than a decade, people in an office spend
about 58% of their time in solo tasks and 42% working with others.
Nonetheless, teamwork is one of the core issues in the post-COVID-19
environment. Collaborative software is at the heart of the current WFH
opportunity, says Kate Lister, president of Global Workplace Analytics, a
Carlsbad, CA research firm. She points out that companies which had not
"gone to the cloud" or adopted remote digital storage "had the most trouble"
in the quick COVID-19 transition.
Predictably, "security" is a major consideration in the quick move to teleworking. Companies had used "security risks" as an excuse for prohibiting
distance working, Lister says, but notes that COVID-19 accelerated the adoption of VPNs and other tools to allow employees to work from home. GWA's
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i3 - September/October 2020

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