It’s been over a year since we entered the first lockdown in the UK. During this challenging period, there have been many changes to our lives, including how we work. Tech has played a crucial role in allowing companies and organisations to keep going. However, this has resulted in changes that will have a long-lasting effect.

Video Conferencing

Many people had never head of Zoom before the start of the pandemic, where now the product has become a verb for the new way of communicating. Workers who had to give up the office for their homes had to adapt quickly to videoconferencing.

Now, even people limited IT skills have become proficient with changing backgrounds, screensharing and the etiquette of when to mute and unmute. With the rise of Microsoft Teams and the launch of Google Meet, videoconferencing is here to stay.

The challenge will be when offices reopen while many still work from home – running hybrid in-person / online meetings is difficult.

Cybersecurity

The focus of cybersecurity had to change when the domestic workplace became the norm.

Risks like lost laptops and networks vulnerabilities have been replaced with managing the security of remote hardware and the increased phishing attempts aimed at employees.

The use of technologies like Multi-Factor Authentication, that tighten up the security around remote access, have had to increased dramatically to combat the risks to employees working from home.

Cloud and infrastructure

There was already a major move to cloud-based tech infrastructure, but the coronavirus pandemic has turbo-charged this trend.

Organisations that had already adopted cloud-based services like Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace were at a major advantage when home working became the norm. Email and data hosted in the Cloud is much easier to access from home.

Companies who still relied on in-house servers struggled with bottlenecks, capacity and maintenance and many have accelerated migrating into the Cloud as quickly as possible.

Inequality

While technology has been essential for many businesses to keep running, some jobs cannot be done from home.

People working in sectors like the hospitality have been hit much harder in the pandemic, but it’s also allowed the tech-savy and those with access to digital-tools to pull further ahead. This will increase inequality at work.

Working patterns

When the internet rose to prominence twenty years ago, there were predictions that city life would go into decline as people chose to live and work wherever they wanted. This shift didn’t happen as quickly as many anticipated.

Now, with organisations embracing home working or hybrid hotdesking models, much more time will be spent working at home.

There are implications in many areas, such as transport, retail, housing, mental and physical health. There will be positives and negatives, but the impact of this permanent shift will be huge.