In some regards, it feels like it was just yesterday. To some of us, it feels like forever ago. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 pandemic and began what was (and continues to be) a tumultuous disruption on all things related to both our personal and professional lives.
Do you remember that week? I’m sure you do. The rampant confusion, the anxiety, and the uncertainty? Do you recall the moment it “hit” for you? Was it that week, or was it when your company instituted an immediate work-from-home policy? Was it the moment that your kids were forced to stay home from school?
We all have our own stark reminders and memories of the earliest days of the pandemic. I remember picking up my son’s ride-on truck at a local fix-it shop; the owner, a retired industrial mechanic, asked me to keep a distance and had a surgical mask in his fleece pocket. “I’m closing down the shop for at least the next 30 days,” he told me as I was leaving.
There was a haze over our family that Friday, when the country began to panic-buy items at stores (we certainly remember this, right?). My wife and mother-in-law went to our local Target and came back with $400 in various household staples. The moment it really sunk in, however, was reacting to a robocall from the town’s school superintendent, who stated that the following week’s classes were canceled in lieu of the emerging health crisis. It was only a matter of days before my kids began their first days of remote learning, not to return to a classroom for nearly nine months. And it was only a little a month from then when my uncle, a person whom is ingrained in many of my childhood memories, succumbed to COVID in April 2020. I look back, too, on the day of his funeral, an overcast morning in which limited members of my family would be masked and several feet apart around his grave site, something I know so many of you experienced, as well.
No matter where you were on March 11, 2020, there is no doubt that the pandemic touched your life in some profound manner. When we look back on two years of disruption, transformation, uncertainty, and trauma, there are various ways that we, as humans, have been changed. I’ve often said (many times on the Future of Work Exchange Podcast), that it’s incredibly tough to point to a “silver lining” during a pandemic that has killed over 6 million people across the world. I’d rather think of it this way: we were forced into change, both personally and professionally, and from that, our world was transformed. Think about how many facets of everyday work life have been altered; think of the Future of Work tenets that were rapidly accelerated over the past two years:
- Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) becoming the preeminent, non-technological components of the Future of Work coming to bear.
- Remote and hybrid workplaces not only serving as lifelines for business continuity, but dramatically transforming the way enterprises think about how they get work done.
- The extended workforce not only rising in size and prominence, but also in strategic value: 82% of businesses in Future of Work Exchange research stated that the non-employee workforce served as a means of flexibility and agility during the most trying times of the past two years.
- The criticality of “flexibility” in all of its forms permeating throughout the symbiotic world of talent and work.
- The rise of empathy-led leadership and business leaders integrating more “human” elements into how they manage their workforce.
- More emphasis on the overall experiences of both candidates and hiring managers as they traverse both a “Great Resignation” and a “Talent Revolution.”
- The continued importance of digital transformation, especially as the events of 2020 forced businesses to operate without traditional in-person processes in place.
- “Recruit from anywhere” becoming a viable, trusted, and powerful way for businesses to leverage talent marketplaces, digital staffing, direct sourcing, and enhanced candidate outreach to find, engage, and source top-tier talent.
- Direct sourcing emerging as perhaps the most innovative, talent-led strategy within the talent acquisition spectrum.
- Purposeful work becoming a foundation of how workers and professionals plan the next steps of their careers.
In totality, the past two years have been a time of trauma, disruption, and loss. They’ve also sparked a revolution of talent, a reimagining of how work gets done, and new applications for technology and innovation.
