Employees at the Center of the Discussion During the New Normal

After weeks and months of quarantine and confinement, the entry into the new normality has brought many companies and governments to begin a discussion about the future of how work is done in each country. In this context, and according to different analysts, the employee always appears in the center of the discussion, especially if in that discussion the words home-office appear. Despite being a region that is not yet prepared for teleworking compared to places like Europe, Australia, Japan, Canada or the US, Latin America has shown an enormous capacity to cope with quarantine in terms of work. A survey conducted by the consulting firm Citrix has analyzed which countries offer the greatest facilities in regards to teleworking. Colombia, with 50 percent, is the country that offers the most possibilities for home office, followed by Argentina, with 44 percent, and Mexico, with 39 percent. “Post-pandemic work will be a model based on learning, which will allow companies to take into account the most human factors of the business, with the employee and his or her experience as a reference, and thinking about technology as a facilitator for optimization, talent retention, empowerment and freedom of choice,” said Juan Pablo Jiménez, Citrix’s Vice President for Latin America and the Caribbean, in the report presented by the company.

According to Andrea Vargas, Director of Potentor, a human resources management platform, the layoffs that took place at the peak of the pandemic were “a mistake”, since according to her statements to Merca20, “other more viable options were not considered.”

Today, companies are looking for ways to find the perfect balance between health, efficiency and productivity in an uncertain environment where many workers want to continue working from home. “Reorganizing work processes and adapting team skills to a changing, uncertain environment in which digital has taken on a leading role will be key in the new business era that has emerged since Covid-19,” explains the Spanish consulting firm Watch&Act. “If companies are always faced with the need to innovate, incorporate market trends and have the right talent to meet their business challenges, now more than ever they are challenged to play their cards right in order to emerge triumphant from this new game board in which many of the rules have changed,” said Ángel Luis Gilsanz, head of Organization at Watch & Act, told Equipos & Talento.

For Gilsanz, the reorganization of the work processes of each employee will be key in the current context in order to begin a process of digitalization and re-adaptation to the new market conditions. Gilsanz says that if you do not know exactly what the processes of a company are, it will be very difficult to attack the problems that may arise. In addition, Watch & Act, recommends an internal audit of all the capacities and skills of each employee as the easiest way to relocate teams or to offer them training for the new normality. In other words, the employee and their concerns, their family reconciliation and their technical capabilities have become one of the major objectives of organizations to navigate this new post-pandemic economic reality.