Almost everyone is under stay-at-home orders and when it will end is still up in the air. Most businesses remain closed. Workers are without jobs and many wonder if there is a job waiting for them. So why is it time to get to work?
Easy.
Because it is time to prepare for when the economy reopens.
As soon as the stay-at-home orders begin to be lifted there will be a small uptick in economic activity as people start to look for normalcy after been cooped up for so long. But it won’t last long because the reality will soon become apparent.
The economy has changed and so has the way people work.
Businesses – especially the service industry – will take time to recover. They have accumulated debt or are behind on their payments. The supply chain – products to sell – will be slow to get back to normal with many businesses ramping up slowly as they asses their own economic situations.
Many businesses will either be in bankruptcy or on the verge of it. This will trickle down through the whole business world. Businesses have also learned how to work remotely and how to do with less workers. This means that jobs will be hard to restart or come by.
The unemployment numbers already show this.
For many, their old jobs simply won’t be there.
For many businesses it will be a matter of survival.
The government will step in and offer many incentives to save businesses and keep workers working. But the fundamental changes for the economy has already happened. There is no going back.
This is why for business owners and for workers alike the next few weeks should be about getting prepared for the new reality.
Those that are prepared for the new economic reality are the ones that will fare better than the others.
Preparedness is everything because those that are ready to work in the new economy will be the ones to prosper. First there will be government incentives to get the economy rolling again. Businesses and workers need to know how to best leverage those.
Then the economy will ramp up. Those that offer the services and products that take advantage of the lean economy will be the ones to benefit the most. For example, businesses now understand that cloud technology is the future.
How many businesses and people knew about Zoom before the pandemic? How many know about it today? More importantly, how many know how it works?
Clearly Zoom was at the right place, at the right time.
Businesses and workers have seen cloud technology work, and many were forced to adopt it. Thus, the businesses and workers who best leverage these technologies are the ones who will prosper in the post-Covid19 economy.
For the gig-workers the opportunities will be there. Uber-like services will be the first to recover as their low-overhead and need for their services will ramp up quicker than traditional transportation models.
Other services are waiting to be the next Uber-model driving evolution.
One quick example is the educational system.
Prior to the pandemic the biggest debate was what education costs and its value. Adoption of remote learning was slow, cumbersome and ineffective. Now that the global emergency has forced the educational system to adopt distance learning the question that will become is why not turn the educational sector into distance learning?
Distance learning cuts costs in labor, real estate and infrastructure. Thus, it will cut tuition rates and more importantly, open learning opportunities for many more students.
Like distance learning platforms that allowed teaching to continue as schools closed benefited from the pandemic, workers and businesses who are ready to provide products and services under the new economy will be the ones to survive the coming changes the best.
Those that are prepared will make money.
As such the question is not when will the world get back to work but what are you doing now to be ready for the new economy?
