ATLANTIC COUNCIL: The promises and pitfalls of the post-COVID workplace via PR Channel Team GEOPOliticalMatters.com
ATLANTIC COUNCI: The promises and pitfalls of the post-COVID workplace
Posted by PR Channel Management Team Gibraltar (Remote)
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For many people, remote work has become a central part of their pandemic experience. But as the BBC chronicles, that freedom isn’t available to everybody. Outbreaks of COVID-19 infections have been attributed to inadequate sick-leave provisions for in-person workers in countries such as Canada and the United States, while employees worldwide—from garment workers in Asia to young people in Latin America and the Caribbean—are grappling with escalating unemployment rates.
For those fortunate enough to still have a job but without the luxury of doing it from home, new technology has stepped into the breach—perhaps foreshadowing how workplaces could be transformed when more people return to the office as the pandemic ebbs. In settings such as the BBC’s offices in the United Kingdom and CERN’s physics lab on the Swiss-French border, a warning buzzer goes off when colleagues get closer than six feet apart from each other. Meanwhile, in the United States, NBA players and staff are wearing wrist sensors to enforce social distancing. In Europe, workplaces from banks to warehouses, airports, and factories are experimenting with “fever-testing thermal cameras, mask-detection systems, and tracking software,” colliding with the premium that many in the region place on privacy, Bloomberg reports.
Many people are pining for a return to the office once the pandemic allows—with some going so far as engaging in pretend commutes in an attempt to separate work and leisure time. But the transformations in the nature of work that have occurred while they’ve been out of the office underscore a reality that we may only now be facing up to: There likely won’t be a return to a pre-pandemic normal.
