Question

The coronavirus is hitting businesses and their employees. Some businesses are still open and millions of employees are working to serve customers. Some of the employees work in their workplaces while some others work from home. Almost all employees worry whether they will lose their jobs or if they will have a pay cut. It is obvious that unemployment will rise because millions of employees will lose their jobs and the remaining employees may have a pay cut (10, 20, 30, 50%) depending on the position in his/her workplace.

Because of the coronavirus, the business environment has started to change. It is becoming a challenging fast-changing environment. Currently, many managers are faced with difficulties. In the near future and in the long run, they will need to deal with important issues.

Lastly, you have to remember that one can easily manage firms during prosperous times but effective managers flourish during difficult times.

Below is a sample list of terms that you can use when answering the questions.

Job security and protection; Employee morale; Employee stress; Anxiety; Employee wellness; Effective decision making; Work performance; Key competencies; Productive employees; Quality of work produced; Work-life balance; Mental health; Employees in a high-risk health category; Illness; Government sector; Health sector; Security forces.

What would be the possible changes and developments in the workforce and workplace diversity in the near future and in the long run? Discuss.

Answer 1

The possible change in the workforce and workplace diversity will be as follows:-

The pandemic has ensured that it has impacted all the countries around the world. The businesses have slowed down and the economy has stagnated. More and more people are using technology to complete work from remote locations to ensure that the company keeps running and to make their jobs secure. This will lead to the companies focusing more on implementing technological changes in the future to adopt a more flexible work approach. More employees will be trained and allowed to work from home to be prepared for any future event.

Similarly, the companies will be more inclined to find alternatives for every aspect of its operations. From the suppliers to be scattered over different regions to ensure that if one region gets affected, the company can rely on other regions for procuring raw materials to finding alternative logistics options.

The focus will shift from implementing schedules for completing work to using a broader approach where the focus will be on the performance. Also, the health of the employees and their wellness will become a talking point during the recruiting process and will tend to influence the potential candidates in their decision making about working for the company or not.

Also, those companies which were operating from their physicals stores will tend to open up to the e-commerce side to ensure that the sales of their products don't get much affected during times such as this.

The results of the pandemic on the bsuienss environment has been very harsh so far but it will also help it in evolving for better.