As someone who believed Covid would end sooner than it has, and would not have as much long-lasting impact on enterprise work practices, there is some new evidence suggestive of long-term changes. The issue is that the changes pull in different directions.
To be sure, as the pandemic is not yet “over,” it might not be possible to assess the magnitude of potential shifts for some time. Still, there is some evidence that external collaboration impact might be the opposite of internal collaboration impact.
Also, face-to-face meetings might be more important for some roles--such as sales--than for customer support, training and marketing. Meeting clients is seen as the top reason to resume travel, according to a Deloitte survey, while internal meetings and training are more likely to stay online.
U.S. spending on business travel is expected to only reach 25 percent to 35 percent of 2019 levels by the fourth quarter of 2021, and 65 percent to 80 percent a year later, according to a Deloitte survey of 150 travel managers.
To the extent that more remote work is going to be a permanent change, it is worth noting that collaboration and productivity trends might not be as rosy as many self-reports suggest.
A study by researchers of Microsoft employees shows firm-wide remote work caused the collaboration network of workers to become more static and siloed, with fewer bridges between disparate parts. Furthermore, there was a decrease in synchronous communication and an increase in asynchronous communication.
Company-wide remote work caused business groups within Microsoft to become less interconnected, the researchers say.
Remote work also reduced informal collaboration. Furthermore, the shift to firm-wide remote work caused employees to spend a greater share of their collaboration time with their stronger ties, which are better suited to information transfer, and a smaller share of their time with weak ties, which are more likely to provide access to new information, the study suggests.
The researchers suggest that hybrid and mixed-mode work arrangements may not work as firms expect.
To be sure, long-term effects might not be the same as the short-term effects. the period of time over which we measured the causal effects of remote work are quite short (three months), and it is possible that the long-term effects of firm-wide remote work are different.
For example, at the beginning of the pandemic, workers were able to leverage existing network connections, many of which were built in person. This may not be possible if firm-wide remote work were implemented long-term.
In other words, social capital decays over time.
The point is that we might see several trends that run counter to each other, with new “distributed and remote” work modes producing less face-to-face interaction, while sales activities might need to be reinstated for sales operations.
On the other hand, many enterprises also will find less need for face-to-face support for some internal operations and some customer-facing tasks.
On a broader level, we might look at an analogy to changes wrought by widespread use of the internet and mobility. Every content business you can think of was changed, first by the internet and then by mobility.
To the extent that the internet reduced information gaps or friction, demand for trade shows, magazines and newspapers actually fell. Much the same has happened with mobile-based communication and media. Newspaper revenues fell while online revenue grew.
Home video shifted to online. Linear subscriptions shifted to internet-based subscriptions. Music likewise shifted from physical media to internet delivery.
In the business world, software distribution also shifted from physical media to online fulfillment; products to services. With quality broadband nearly ubiquitous, computing shifted from local to remote, as well.
To the extent that trade shows, trade journals and specialized business publications were needed to reduce information friction, there simply was less need once the internet made information more transparent and easy to get.
There may be parallels with the ways business information and commerce changes after Covid. Demand for some activities will decline while others replace them. Business travel, trade shows and collaboration itself might be altered on a permanent basis.
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