The position we find ourselves pressed into because of Covid-19 has of course been entirely unpredictable. There have been threats of global pandemics over recent years such as swine flu or avian flu, but they haven’t amounted to much and life has pretty much carried on as normal.

Essentially, we haven’t had a dress rehearsal for the situation we find ourselves in now.

We hope to be able to return to something pretty close to what life was like before Covid at some stage. It’s probably fair to say however that we’re all expecting changes in one way or another.

We should recognise that unlike our current position, we will have the opportunity to influence what those changes will be. We have been there before and we should be preparing to make our return to “normal” play to our advantage; taking the best bits from how things were and merging them with the best from how things are now to create the best possible state of how things will be.

There are plenty of commentators on the Internet who are making HR and business management predictions for 2021. We’ve looked over a few of them and have come up with a short list of the trends and concepts that we think are most likely to come to fruition. It could be a good idea to give some thought to these now and probably take some action. When some form of normality eventually returns, you’ll want to be prepared and ready to hit the ground running.

• The Flexible Office: We’re learning that a lot of employees like the opportunity of working from home. There’s no commute, no office distractions and you don’t have to change out of your PJs. We also know that the office and workplace interaction is important. So perhaps the future office is a place where start and finish times, and even work days, are not prescribed. Hot-desks and lockers replace allocated workstations and different zones are allocated and designed for different types of task. It’s a futuristic view that now seems like an obvious step-change.
  
  
• Skills Mapping: A quick Internet search reveals a surprising number of vacancies. Our clients have been telling us for a while that they have struggled to find suitably trained talent to fill their jobs and Brexit may exacerbate the issue. The future solution might be to identify the next best thing; someone with skills that are close to or contiguous to what we need and develop and nurture that individual to be able to fulfil the role we really need doing.
  
  
• Remote Management: We should expect employees to demand more flexibility. If you don’t offer it your competitors will and you’ll experience a potentially damaging exodus of talent. But with remote workers comes remote management and it cuts both ways. Managers as well as workers are entitled to flexibility so be prepared to manage those at home and be managed from a boss who’s at home; or even abroad. It’s happening already but there will likely be more formalisation and with greater deployment of remote productivity monitoring software.
  
  
• Ethical Management: We’re experiencing better air quality because there are less cars on the road right now but the whole ethical argument is set to play a bigger part in how businesses are run; influenced by both employees and customers. Green policies and commitments to the environment already play a part but as the BLM movement has found a voice, the Me Too movement before that and with early signs that older workers have been indirectly disadvantaged through furlough, expect diversity and equality to play a bigger role in how businesses recruit and how consumers spend.

The winners in the not-too-distant future will be those who can see the changes coming and act before the competition. Some of it might be a leap of faith but a lot is being able to see the trends and being open-minded enough to embrace them.

Of course, such dynamic change will need robust policies to be developed and people strategies to be implemented. We’re here to support with all areas of your HR and People Management needs. Call us on 01452 331331 or e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.