How Coronavirus is Transforming the Workplace for Good

There may not be many silver linings to a possible pandemic, however in the spirit of looking for the silver linings that make lemonade of lemons, the Coronavirus outbreak could be catalysing changes to the economy for the better, in the long term.

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Resilience theorists would say we are entering the ‘release phase’ of the adaptive cycle that characterises systemic development: ‘a rapid, chaotic period during which capitals (natural, human, socials, built and financial) tend to be lost and novelty can succeed.’ Forgoing out-dated systems that no longer serve us and switching to models of better business and innovation can benefit us, but we need to act fast.

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Empires are built and lost in a day and whole industries are often on the verge of being washed ashore against the tidal waves of change, as our structures reconfigure around horizontal platforms, data and ecosystems, with the position of the average worker being seemingly more precarious than ever.

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Germs have changed the course of history in the past, and as the Economist shared earlier this week:

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Officials will have to act when they do not have all the facts, because much about the virus is unknown. A broad guess is that 25-70% of the population of any infected country may catch the disease. China’s experience suggests that, of the cases that are detected, roughly 80% will be mild, 15% will need treatment in hospital and 5% will require intensive care. Experts say that the virus may be five to ten times as lethal as seasonal flu, which, with a fatality rate of 0.1%, kills 60,000 Americans in a bad year. Across the world, the death toll could be in the millions.

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So if Corona did workplaces, what might they look like… How might a spiked, 120nm-virus from Wuhan change the course of the economy and workplace, for good?

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Firstly it could unite nations by reinforcing the power of scientific collaboration and the open-sourcing of information sharing under a global threat. A group of online archivists created an open access directory of 5000+ scientific studies about the virus than anyone can access for free: ‘it’s illegal but it’s also a moral imperative’. A number of major scientific publishers including Elsevier and Springer Nature have also removed their paywalls as of late.

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x+why, a flexible work space and start-up hub fostering socially responsible businesses in London, are centred around heralding in a new decade of purpose-driven capitalism, one that focuses on collaboration over competition. Citing that ‘Darwin understood that evolution is the story of how different species developed increasingly better methods of collaborating’.

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The virus also means digital quarantines, less travel and more remote work: the video conferencing firm ‘Zoom’, had added 2.22 million monthly active users in 2020, compared to 1.99 million in all of 2019. Whilst eviscerating the travel industry, the SARS crisis of 2002 is credited with helping to launch China’s e-commerce industry, and it appears their Tech Industry is currently benefitting too, as they step in to fulfil changing consumers needs.

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Alongside this, self-sufficiency especially around food, energy and products is being encouraged, with 60% of North American Manufacturers already being impacted by the virus as supply chains are thrown into question and uncertainty. It has also lead to a new record for the total amount of global inactive container tonnage, as shipping fleets lay idle. The impacts will be felt around the world in the coming months as it translates to major supply shortages.

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Vertical farming could allow some kind of food sustainability at a community or city level. Advanced versions of these use fewer water resources, have lower transport miles and the crops are often herbicide and pesticide-free. In terms of local manufacturing, 3D printing is also increasingly coming of age.

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China’s carbon emissions have dropped by almost a quarter over the last two weeks, with nitrous oxide pollution down by almost 36% and domestic flights have plummeted by a whopping 70%. Whilst the economic activity has never been worse, their air quality has never been better.

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We are all being forced to become early adopters and adaptors of change. One benefit of the Coronavirus has been the urgent need to question the status quo, whilst the innovators may have already been asking if things could be done differently under the knowledge that prevention is better than cure, it often takes a crisis to catalyse urgent action and implementation at scale.

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This month Amazon cancelled ‘non-essential travel’ for 798,000 employees, saving costs they may be reluctant to reintroduce as the possible pandemic subsides. Manufacturing has also been moving closer to home under re-shoring, as China’s rise in living standards has begun to erode some of the benefits of manufacturing overseas. BCG identified that the US had surpassed both China and Mexico as the most likely destination for new manufacturing capacity almost 5 years ago.

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The economic ripples may also be forcing us to take a better look at how we cater to those on a low-wage or zero hours contract. Whilst white collared workers such as lawyers and developers have no trouble working from home, the same cannot be said of an Uber driver or restaurant worker.

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Another interesting point is that democracies tend to handle epidemics better than non-democracies, mainly owing to censorship and the recognition that public health fundamentally depends on public trust (which today is at historic lows). China has received a lot of backlash for its initial handling of the crisis, with denial and attempts to hush whistle-blowers delaying their response. As online reporter Bill Bishop comments:

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The Party propaganda machine is working hard to control the messaging but the revelations that there were medical professionals in Wuhan trying to warn about this virus back in December but were silenced by the stability maintenance apparatus has provoked an uproar. [...] This is as close to an existential crisis for Xi and the Party that I think we have seen since 1989.

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Most strikingly, the outbreak has highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of our increasingly interconnected and ever-changing world, uniting nations across borders to tackle a common enemy, at an increasingly interesting and pivotal time in modern history.

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