admin During this pandemic, traditional business models have come under pressure, they are adjusting to new and unexpected deadlines, prioritizing its tasks and, in some cases taking on additional responsibilities.
Smart leaders take advantage of all opportunities they can find and showing their innovation through creative imagination and their resilience in adapting to this new reality. However, the pandemic has increased the need for specialist digital skillsets to help businesses become more aligned with today’s myriad technologies and platforms.
Command on Lucrative Digital Skills
The pandemic has curated a need for digital skillsets in order to survive and continue to prosper the business for long term growth. Currently, 80 percent of job vacancies are in need of digital skills of some kind.
Corona outbreak disrupted lots of industries and affected a momentous negative impact on supply chains, Airlines, and Oil and Gas worldwide. This is continued in some countries due to the second wave of virus infections. According to data, 75 countries exhibit 103,937,794 doses of coronavirus vaccines, but still some countries face a continuous vaccine shortage making social distancing and personal hygiene measures a must. Some countries have been put under lockdown, assigning quarantine measures on the entire population.
Global tech giants like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Salesforce, Twitter, and the like have had to bring out compulsory policies like work-from-home amid the corona outbreak. Bans on people gatherings and traveling to different countries has led to a slowdown in the business of various industries such as finance, entertainment, tech, hyperlocal marketplace, travel, retail, and hospitality.
As a consequence, some technology companies have shut down their offices and stores temporarily, restricted their employees to travel to the covid affected areas hindering the supply chains across the world. Manufacturers have failed to make timely delivery impacting many tech businesses.
At the same time, technology companies are realizing the benefits of outsourcing, now more than ever. Remote working has been given first choice amid the corona outbreak making software development & maintenance least affected by the pandemic.
Emotional intelligence and Empathy at Work
Successful work from home formula necessitates good emotional intelligence and empathy for others’ emotions and behaviors, particularly when staff is feeling uneasy. Good communication skills, Clarity in email conversations and at virtual meetings are must haves to gain trust and maintain high productivity in the workplace.
Flexibility Is Key to Success
From the fresher level itself when women become proficient in their skills, children or elder care change their priorities and become a barrier to move up to the corporate ladder. Flexibility in working hours is one of the few positives to come out of the pandemic which are holding the women back in the workplace and making them believe that they are good enough to compete with their male counterparts. Companies have realized that women in key leadership roles are a vital part of the solution to the tech skills gap and can be supported in terms of flexible work and fiscal measures.
According to the web sources, tech job losses have been less widespread than in other sectors due to the remote working style. Also, women in STEM education have improved in comparison to the last decade. Technology is made use of in the hospitals to diagnose patients, governments employ it for contact tracing apps and firms trust on it to support the major work from home trial in history.
The Right Opportunities
Charlotte Woodworth, gender equality director at Business in the Community, a charity promoting responsible business stated women leave because they feel they don’t get the support they need from managers, the right opportunities or the work-life balance they need.
Whereas, Merici Vinton, founder and CEO of Ada’s List, a global community for women in tech pointed out it is important that employers understand the difference between remote and flexible working, and enable the latter to happen. According to her, it’s about the perception that people aren’t doing the work if they’re doing different hours, when really the important thing is outcomes and that the work gets done, enabling effective flexible working is about understanding the full picture of the employee experience while working at home.
According to Rebecca George, president of BCS – A key challenge here is that “it’s easier for discriminatory behaviour to go unnoticed, or unchecked”. She also opined as per the research managers often give ground to those who look like themselves, and with networking opportunities thin on the ground, it’s possible that without care and special attention, some people may have to work twice as hard to receive the opportunities and recognition they deserve.
Productivity Standards
Promotion has to be based on outcomes. “If promotion is based on hours spent in the office and productivity standards, it doesn’t work,” said Laura Baldwin, president of tech publishing house O’Reilly and added if you base it on outcomes, you’ll always promote the right people, no matter where they are. Nowadays, companies applying this formula and establishing their benchmarks continuously.
Patricia Gestoso, who is the head of scientific support for a large European software firm, done a research in collaboration with the Global Professional Women’s Network on the impact of the pandemic in unpaid work terms on 1,312 professional women, mainly in the US, the UK and Europe, discovered that tech workers have been hit just as hard in this area as anyone else.
She believes that the tech companies give people flexibility in the way they work, not elasticity, but if we don’t do some radical thinking and change the paradigm of what work looks like, we won’t just see women constrained in future, but men too.
Whereas Ada’s List’s Vinton believes during these exceptional times, it’s possible to rewire the business to make it more equitable as it gives you the excuse, and the freedom, to tackle some of the existing inequalities and barriers that have built up over the years. It’s time to build a strategic approach to create a more diverse workforce as it will pay off in the long run as the economy will start to blossom again.
About the Author
Dr. Sonal Burghate is Editor at TLG Media LLP and associate editor & publisher of IJCAMS (International journal of Commerce and Management Studies) journal. She has over a decade of experience in Technology and Training sector. Her area of interest is Technology, Commerce and Management. In her prior work experience, she was responsible for leading, managing and developing multiple departments to ensure they achieve the highest possible standards of excellence in all its activities. She has published several national and international research papers in reputed journals and attended various national and international conferences.
Magazine 
