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THE Government says work ‘will never be the same again’ but what does this mean?
As part of The Good Information Project we are posing the question this month ‘What is the future of work after Covid-19?’.
CSO figures say almost half (47%) of people had their employment situation affected by Covid-19. This includes loss of employment, temporary layoff, a change in work hours, a move to remote working or a change to the model of the business.
In this discussion journalists Christine Bohan, Sean Murray and Adam Daly answer your questions and explore their recent research.
Join us as we discuss how work will change for many after the pandemic.
This work is co-funded by Journal Media and a grant programme from the European Parliament. Any opinions or conclusions expressed in this work is the author’s own. The European Parliament has no involvement in nor responsibility for the editorial content published by the project. For more information, see here.
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A lot of people will be sent home permanently and replaced with robot overlords or not replaced at all.
I called to a well-known nuts & bolts supplier in Mallow recently and tried to buy something. Yer man stood there refusing to sell them to me, told me I had to open an account and have a 1,000 euro a year minimum spend. That sales counter first went cashless during covid, next it will go bodyless and then it won’t be there at all. Perhaps the whole location will be shut down and all orders dispatched from Dublin/UK by a robot.
So when those guys decide to change job they won’t be replaced, eventually that company will be just one guy laying on the beach sunning himself in the Carribean watching the bank balance increase on his laptop while the stuff gets shipped in automatically from China.
Big companies have been itching to close physical locations and covid is providing the perfect excuse for the phuqqers. You will be told to look online, talk to their chatbot while the elite team of managers big it up with a life of hedonism in the Bahamas. It will become hard to get low-volume items as companies decide they can no longer be bothered with customers.
Of course a recession could change everything, then they’ll be back looking for every last sign and the aforementioned company will hang a big sign outside their door saying “Please come in and buy a couple of bolts!”
I love the idea that we wont simply return to normal, somehow things will be different, they wont, it will be close to the same as it ever was for most people. From your article today about company managers its clear to see that they are already building rhetoric to justify returns to office working post vaccine roll out. We’re a nation of middle managers… “No matter how sophisticated the tech, it doesn’t replace that human interaction. That’ll be something people need again when this is over.” expect to be paid less also.
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