The legacy of COVID-19 could be a new spirit of collaboration, connectedness, and community that will benefit society, business, and the economy alike. From leadership to the bottom-line, from operations to safety and security, how can we re-imagine our organizations for a faster recovery and ensure continuous learning?

During the People Matters L&D Conference 2020, Ester Martinez, Editor-in-Chief, People Matters along with Rohit Kapoor, CEO– India & South Asia, OYO, Arun Karna, MD & CEO, AT&T, Global network Services India, Amit Jain, MD, L’Oreal India, discussed the different shifts that organizations must consider to reimagine their business focus and faster recovery.

Here are the big tectonic shifts brought by pandemic that organizations must embrace:

Massively accelerated the need for organizations to digitize:

If "necessity is the mother of invention," coronavirus (COVID-19) forced many around the world to rethink our daily lives from work to school to entertainment. In response to travel bans, school closures, and recommendations to not gather in large groups and keep our distance from fellow humans to limit the spread of the virus, many people turned to digital tools to keep some semblance of normality. It's been imperative to digitally transform our places of work and education to be able to operate effectively. Those companies able to use technology well to keep going and rethink their business model for the future by fast-tracking digital transformation will be ones ahead of their competition.

Managing data security:

Security has proven to be the foundation for digital empathy in a remote workforce during the pandemic.  Cybersecurity provides the underpinning to operationally resiliency as more organizations enable secure remote work options. To maintain cyber resilience, businesses need to regularly evaluate their risk.

Getting people to connect with technology

Technology is the secret key to a wide range of industries worldwide sustaining amidst the prolonged lockdown led by the pandemic.While the use and application of technology has become near ubiquitous around the world, the actual adoption of new and emerging technologies across most organizations continues to be less than optimal becaue of the wrong choices made while selecting a technology. Select a tech that people can emotionally realate to.

Mindset and openness to change

As we look around, there are a number of businesses that are sustaining this crisis pretty well, while some have crashed and some are flourishing irrespective of the pandemic. The organizations that have built a culture of experimentation, a culture of trying new things, a culture of failing and succeeding, and a culture of empowering individuals are those organizations that will be able to navigate through the crisis. More than capabilities, we need a mindset that vouch for opeanness to change.