The Coronavirus pandemic and subsequent quarantine continue to disrupt and transform the technology job market. More IT companies now allow their employees to work from home on a full time basis. Tracking how telecommuting influences these organizations’ overall productivity is going to be a worthy exercise over the next year or two.
Remote work has quickly moved from a perk used to attract top notch tech talent to what is now a standard practice. How is this transition going to influence the IT job market over time? Is telecommuting now the new normal in a COVID-19-dominated world? Let’s take a closer look.
Companies Focusing on Making Working From Home More Efficient
A crisis like a pandemic provides a great opportunity to separate the truly visionary and effective leaders from the rest of the pack. With a new focus on telecommuting in the technology space, forward-looking organizations are taking the steps to make the process more efficient and more productive. Tracy Brower, writing for Forbes, notes how allowing work from home is another signal of a new focus on flexibility in the wake of COVID-19.
“Companies have put greater technology systems and support in place to facilitate mobile working,” said Brower. Additionally, they “will expand the acceptability of remote work, and they will provide more choice and flexibility to employees to work wherever they can get their best work done, including away from the office.” In short, it doesn’t appear that telecommuting is going away in the near future.
Allowing Remote Work Widens the Candidate Pool For Companies
By embracing remote work, companies gain the additional benefit of a wider talent pool for their open positions. This is especially helpful for certain job roles that remain high in demand, including cybersecurity professionals as well as software engineers with experience in AI and machine learning. Organizations are now able to focus on hiring the best candidate no matter their location.
Still, expect the top candidates to remain discerning when deciding between different job opportunities. Companies that make the effort to develop robust technical systems and processes to support remote work will stand out in a competitive marketplace for the best IT professionals. This might give an advantage to those organizations with remote work policies already in place before the pandemic. The wisest strategy for other tech companies likely involves a newfound focus on the tech and processes to support telecommuting tech.
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