Leaning into the new normal 

After nearly a month-and-a-half of quarantine curfew, the Government has finally seen it fit to ease restrictions. The move comes following several consecutive days of COVID-19 infection numbers falling below the 1,000 mark and the ongoing success of the vaccination drive where some 95% of the country’s over-30 population have been fully vaccinated.

While the opening up of the country will not likely affect those living in the country’s business hubs, such as Colombo – as the last few weeks of curfew in those areas had scarcely been enforced – for those living outside of those areas it will likely be extremely welcome, allowing them to finally access much-needed essential goods and services.

However, even with a notional reopening, it will not be surprising to see more and more work places do away with work from home protocols and demand that their employees start working from office. But while it is tempting to return to pre-COVID living, millions of workers, both within and outside Sri Lanka, could genuinely benefit from a hybrid system. 

Allowing remote working could be a game-changer for the welfare of workers and result in increased productivity and fewer overheads for some companies. In many ways it would be a pity to give this up, partly because the infrastructure has already been set up for such a transition to take place.

That said, the desire for work to return to normal, especially in the public sector, is natural. Not least down to the fact that much of the public sector simply is not geared towards remote working in the same way the private sector is; long-term staff only familiarised in legacy software, and outdated methods of data-entry, make this particularly difficult.

In that sense, this pandemic should be looked at as an opportunity to update such systems and processes in the public sector, while the Government should at the same time urge the private sector to continue with remote working wherever possible – maybe even making it a permanent feature in the long run.

Workers themselves are resisting moves to shift away from ‘work from home,’ instead demanding the improved work-life balance that many have experienced as a silver lining during the pandemic.

Unfortunately, one major barrier to this is conventional managers who struggle to evolve themselves and end up preventing change within their departments or organisations. True, a long-term work-from-home environment would mean that managers will have to work harder to communicate and build relationships with their teams, but this is not difficult if technology is utilised. Changing attitudes, however, is hard even with the support of technology. 

If companies and countries are serious about adopting a hybrid model then there are two things that need to be tackled. One, Government policies need to evolve around working from home and how welfare, pensions and other support is provided to employees, which would be challenging across different industries. 

Secondly, companies need to optimise their policies about remote work and encourage a healthier work environment. This brings a lot of challenges, from providing equipment to deploying communication technology, from accurately logging time to virtual project management, and so on.

But a wider adaptation of remote-work culture will further accelerate the demands of the modern global economy and undoubtedly enable organisations to fulfil their requirements more easily than before. This is the long-term incentive companies need to focus on and not become bogged down by conventional attitudes. 

Sri Lanka, with its comparatively small economy and even smaller private sector, could easily coordinate to create a hybrid work system – and this is not even taking into consideration the numerous health and safety benefits in a post-pandemic world.