Work From Home: How COVID-19 Will Impact the Future of Work

  • Needed Staff
Work From Home' Economy and Other COVID-19

I still remember when freelancers and people working from home were considered wild and windswept renegades with questionable and sometimes dodgy credentials. Also, their attitudes towards work and ‘getting a good one’ were possibly risky when trying to complete the all-important project.

Then came COVID-19, which turned the world as we knew it completely on its head. Before we could reach for the tissue box, everything virtually changed. And when I say ‘virtually’, I mean it quite literally—virtually!

As a result of much-needed isolation to quell the spread of the COVID-19 virus, humanity has skipped about ten years in history to seek out alternative ways of living and getting things done in lockdown. From shopping for essentials to our children’s education, the priorities of trying to make a living have changed considerably, as have the ‘traditional practices’ of socially and professionally meeting with one another. As a result, home-based workers, freelancers and their now fashionable services have become insanely popular overnight.

It is now abundantly evident that the world, as we knew it, will never really return to its former state. When it comes to utilising the internet and other services that require little or no physical contact, like evolution, the new normal has come to stay, and we must embrace it to thrive.

Why not work from home?

Let’s face it, who wouldn’t think twice before catching the earliest flight to Auckland for that all-important corporate meeting that is a guaranteed ‘all-day’ business battle with too many coffees and half a sandwich for lunch, three airport dumplings for dinner? Then, the ‘way-too-late, boozy red-eye flight’ back home, when you can conveniently connect over a Zoom call from the comfort of your home office?

Superfast ‘no contact’ couriers for everything from family pizzas to alcohol and, certainly not least, custom haircuts that come to you! And I’m sure if you search for COVID-19 services on the web, you’ll be surprised at the volumes of information, services, and capacities you’ll find.

Websites, apps, and platforms like Needed that effectively connect business owners with talent and make it easy to get things done quickly while you work from home have become more relevant. Providing an enabling environment for freelance services to the people who ‘currently work from home’ and the recently returned business marketplace, busily trying to re-establish itself, is vital for our economy to recover.

It is essential to point out that local freelance sites like Needed are created exclusively for connecting local freelance services with local businesses and entrepreneurs, both established and new, that keep our local economy turning. This ensures our much-needed finances ‘stay local’ to aid in bolstering our nation’s economy rather than vanishing into thin air by heading offshore for services, which happens with the other internationally-based freelance sites.

Our local businesses, suppliers, and Kiwi freelancers desperately need our financial and emotional support more than ever before. And I believe we all have a civil obligation to do our level best to seek out opportunities to support them the best way we can.

It is fair to say that even though our level 4 restrictions have been relaxed to 3 recently due to the much anticipated ‘flattening out’ of our COVID-19 curve, it could still be a long while before your next overseas flight. I’d hasten to add that it’s also going to be a long, slow process of recovery for domestic airlines, mainly due to the acceptance and utilisation of ‘alternatives to air travel’ created by the basic necessity to communicate and engage with one another, both for social reasons and for business purposes.

What is nice to see is that amidst all the upheaval we’ve experienced as a nation of late, some things will never change. That’s the basic human desire to interact socially with one another, whether you work from home or not—a trait that makes us fundamentally human. And that’s a good thing, don’t you think?