How the New Normal is Changing Your Value

By Mark Kaplan / May 25, 2020

The new normal is only a transitional period. It is in the middle of shut down on the way to establishing business models that we aren’t quite sure yet how they will look. Business operators are feeling their way through like a person trying to walk through a room with the lights out.

At the start, businesses just want to generate cash flow. Before long, they will need profits to keep the doors open as borrowing can create too much debt to be managed by cash flow. The way the operators look at personnel is also in transition.

What Do Businesses Foresee

One aspiration is to become more robotic and automated. The advantages are obvious. Operations don’t have to shut down for pandemics. Robots don’t need spacing. Robots don’t need work life balance.

What do operators need from personnel? They need workers who are flexible and adaptable. They need workers who can learn on the fly. They need people who are more self-sacrificing than the pre-pandemic mind set where workers wanted more balance than pay.

Skill sets of the near future might include more digital and internet capabilities. Personnel will have to understand new software intended to make businesses more automated with fewer personnel. A dependence on fitting people closely for intense operations is now impractical.

Time for Self-Assessment

Restaurants may have to be more specialized with fewer menu options as they adjust to fewer people in their dining room. Paranoia is likely to last much longer than business re-openings so online and delivery are going to be important.

Remote work is becoming the norm for large tech enterprises. Online skills for accomplishing results and having meetings is becoming the aspiration of the biggest tech companies. This will be a happy adjustment for some as it eliminates the commute and may allow workers to move out of expensive cities to more low cost suburbs.

Traditional businesses like law and finance may still need workers to gather and they feel personal collaboration is the key to innovation. They may have fewer personnel and those who are on board will need a wider range of skills.

Where do you fit in this transition and likely outcome? What type of work mode best suits your disposition and skills? Are you a fast learner, adaptable and flexible? Are you capable of working with more automation?

Most importantly, could you be instrumental in helping firms become more streamlined and determining where efficiencies could be most productive? There will always be a need for the people who decide how to incorporate efficiencies and people who design the new efficiencies.

What Should You Do Now?

This transition will be taking place for two to five years. You should assess what you can contribute and how you would like to work. You might assess your passions and how you could pursue them in the new work models. Will you change industries? Will you become an independent? Will you have a few jobs?

What types of degrees, certificates, and skills will businesses be seeking from their current and future personnel? As always, current employees will have to learn new skills and those seeking employment will be competing with a large pool of labor. Job seekers will be looking at different industries for good fits.

This is the right time to develop optimum health from nutrition and exercise. A good time to decide whether you can work remotely or prefer human contact. Assess your passions and skills and see if there is opportunity for you to mesh them. Stay vigilant as to changes in many industries to know how yours will be affected and if there may be new opportunities for you.

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