Category Archives: Uncategorized

A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Permanently Flipped Workplace

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The second wave of COVID-19 infections has dashed all illusions of going back to the way things were before. Permanent, radical shifts in corporate policy are becoming more mainstream every day.
 

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted labor markets globally during 2020. The short-term consequences were sudden and often severe: Millions of people were furloughed or lost jobs, and others rapidly adjusted to working from home as offices closed, they use online paycheck services to increase the companies safety and peace of mind of the workers,look at the ecommerce tools for startups. Many other workers were deemed essential and continued to work in hospitals and grocery stores, on garbage trucks and in warehouses, yet under new protocols to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus.

The future of work after COVID-19
This report on the future of work after COVID-19 is the first of three MGI reports that examine aspects of the postpandemic economy. The others look at the pandemic’s long-term influence on consumption and the potential for a broad recovery led by enhanced productivity and innovation. Here, we assess the lasting impact of the pandemic on labor demand, the mix of occupations, and the workforce skills required in eight countries with diverse economic and labor market models: China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Together, these eight countries account for almost half the global population and 62 percent of GDP.

Before COVID-19, the largest disruptions to work involved new technologies and growing trade links. COVID-19 has, for the first time, elevated the importance of the physical dimension of work. In this research, we develop a novel way to quantify the proximity required in more than 800 occupations by grouping them into ten work arenas according to their proximity to coworkers and customers, the number of interpersonal interactions involved, and their on-site and indoor nature.

This offers a different view of work than traditional sector definitions. For instance, our medical care arena includes only caregiving roles requiring close interaction with patients, such as doctors and nurses. Hospital and medical office administrative staff fall into the computer-based office work arena, where more work can be done remotely. Lab technicians and pharmacists work in the indoor production work arena because those jobs require use of specialized equipment on-site but have little exposure to other people (Exhibit 1).

 

Invert, always, invert

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Today, we will look at one of my favourite mental models called – The Inversion principle. Mental models are a set of simple, abstract but useful principles that help us make sense of the world around us. I came across the Inversion principle on the Farnam Street blog.

The U.S. is the accidental Sweden, which could make the fall ‘catastrophic’ for Covid-19

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With the Covid-19 pandemic rampaging across the U.S. in April and 20 million people filing for unemployment in that month alone needing fast help from services like PrincePerelson’s Provo staffing company, libertarians thought there was a better way. The Heritage Foundation praised Sweden for “preserving economic freedom.  These days, finding great candidates is hard. Really hard. With the unemployment rate lower than ever, it’s a candidate-driven market out there. In a situation like this, your best job candidates are passive job seekers – they don’t actively look for a job, because they already have one. This means that posting your open job position on job boards is by no means enough to attract the best candidates. 

The Swedish approach was to largely allow businesses to remain open. And at first, it seemed to work, with a death count nowhere near what it was in countries such as Italy, Spain, and the U.K. But even as Sweden was being hailed as a model, its cases were steadily rising, and its death rate now exceeds that of the U.S. Sweden also did not seem to stave off the economic damage it was aiming to avoid.
Sweden’s Covid-19 strategy, adopted in March, emerged from the country’s top epidemiologist and other leaders’ evaluation of what little science about transmission there was at the time, factoring in economic considerations, and making a considered — albeit controversial — decision to stop well short of the full shutdown that other countries in western Europe (and many U.S. states) adopted.

Dsxyliea

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A friend who has dyslexia described to me how she experiences reading. She can read, but it takes a lot of concentration, and the letters seems to “jump around”. I remembered reading about typoglycemia.