The impact of the pandemic has been seen in many aspects of a common man’s life. What society behaved like before is different from what it behaves like now. Social interactions, which are tied to the roots of what forms a society, have seemed to get numbed out of people’s lives after the pandemic. One of the biggest impacts of this was faced by the working people. While some businesses benefited from the pandemic, others got left with scars that they still have not recovered from. One prominent theme seen in the way people work is the change to work from home.
Industries during the time of pandemic faced a huge challenge of how to get people to work again without posing a risk to their lives. Most of these industries saw going virtual as the best method. Though this virtualization at the time was seen as a temporary adaptation to the situation, its usage is still visible. According to Nick Tate, 2022, even after passing the height of the pandemic, in 2022 forty five percent of full time workers in the U.S are still working from home. This work from home is not only embraced by companies as they don’t need to spend extra to run their offices, it is also embraced by the employees. Up to this day the majority of the people working from home wish to continue doing work from home. At first the change to work from home was quite difficult for many, however, according to Edward Glaeser, 2021, productivity has been seen to increase in several firms because of this change. Many predict that the change brought by the pandemic is likely to stay, maybe not as the prominent way of working, but continue as a known way of working.
Though this model does work well for industries that provide non tangible services, it isn’t suitable for all. According to Luka Vidovic, industries like airlines and automobiles were greatly impacted because of workers not being able to physically come to work. Not only was the production and maintenance side of the industry choked, customers of these airlines were also stuck in their houses. Other than the losses of these industries, the workers working in these companies also lost their jobs, during a time when they needed money the most. The impact of the pandemic was so grave that airline tickets are still priced higher than the pre pandemic time in order for the companies to recover from the losses faced.
Tough times like the Covid pandemic did bring struggles for many, however, they did also bring opportunity for innovation. The hard work and adaptation that people put together reshaped the civic engagements of the society. A commonplace like going to jobs connects many emotionally because of the shared hard work and determination between people. A change in this process that has been happening the same way for centuries can have several different effects on society. In the case of work from home, many benefited from it and many didn’t, but such is the nature of any change. What is important is that society learned greatly by discovering something new that it did know before.
Works Cited
Glaeser, Edward, and David Cutler. “Perspective | You May Get More Work Done at Home. But You’d Have Better Ideas at the Office.” Washington Post, 24 Sept. 2021, www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/09/24/working-home-productivity-pandemic-remote/. Accessed 8 Dec. 2022.
Tate, Nick. “The Pandemic Has Changed Us, Permanently.” WebMD, 20 Jan. 2022, www.webmd.com/special-reports/covid-second-anniversary/20220120/how-we-changed. Accessed 8 Dec. 2022.
Vidovic, Luka. “Industries Most and Least Impacted by COVID-19 from a Probability of Default Perspective – January 2022 Update.” Www.spglobal.com, 11 Feb. 2022, www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/blog/industries-most-and-least-impacted-by-covid-19-from-a-probability-of-default-perspective-january-2022-update. Accessed 8 Dec. 2022.