The new normal at work

In LATAM, daily work in various market segments has undergone profound changes due to the current health contingency. Before March of this year, an average workday involved tasks like checking attendance, answering emails at the office, eating on the street, and attending meetings with other colleagues. Far seemed the possibility of moving to a virtual or semi-face-to-face scheme that has been implemented for years in other regions of the world.

However, in Latin America COVID-19 has accelerated transformations that organically would have taken many more years. And it is that the need to combine production and the safeguarding of people’s health has led companies, which can thus afford it, to migrate to more flexible labor schemes, not face-to-face and that privilege quality over quantity.

Although more requirements are required than the will to assume a new work normality, such as having a sufficient budget, compatible infrastructure and digital skills, it is also true that this evolution could not take longer. In the new Industrial Revolution, dominated by technology and information, the outsourcing, offshoring and flexibility are guidelines that will dominate the labor dynamics from now on.

In this way, work teams have had to learn to establish horizontal work structures, opt for flexible hours, use cloud solutions, and offer to work from anywhere. However, these changes are not received equally by all those involved. For some it turned out to be the panacea that improved their quality of life and productivity. For others, it represented a greater family burden, due to the difficulty of combining work and home relationships in the same space, and economical one due to having to assume fixed costs.

Many work dynamics will return to their pre-pandemic state when the health contingency ends. It is also true that many will choose to remain working remotely. Are companies and employers ready to respond proactively to this scenario? We believe that many are. If this is not the case, our recommendation is to investigate what needs, motivators and difficulties Latin American workers and employers face in the end of the global health situation.

Knowing the details of the changes in the Latin American labor market will allow planning the response of companies to the challenge of the new labor normality that in many cases was resolved in a reactive way. A sea of ​​possibilities opens up for many today in this field. Is your company or you as a worker ready to take on this transformation with all its possibilities?

Market research is an ally to solve the questions indicated above. At Acertiva we are ready to support you in the project of knowing and designing response lines so that the medium and long term represent a rebound and an improvement in the operational capacity of your work center. In your hands is the possibility of turning areas of opportunity into new strengths. The future is today.