Last October, after seven years of important milestones, Workana was still swimming upstream against the current of work traditions.

But in April, the platform was introduced as “The Future of Work: Digital, Remote, and Freelance”, and overnight, the rules had changed radically.

Gone are the days when remote work was an option. Now it is a requirement, like it or not.

Everyone has had to adapt to the digital world to survive. Even seniors who were afraid of using credit cards online began to download apps that facilitate this onto their phones.

How has the pandemic affected different industries?

Starting with the bad news: the tourism, advertising, retail, and transport industries have been hit hard and caused some interesting trends, such as the increase in private transport (hopefully this includes eco-friendly initiatives such as using bicycles and hybrid cars).

On the other hand, sectors like videoconferencing technology, delivery, healthcare, telemedicine and entertainment are skyrocketing with popularity.

Up until now, the pandemic has had a positive effect on Workana. Yes, it is the result of a crisis, and these are not happy circumstances, but the numbers don’t lie.

The situation had barely started to get complicated in Spain, a country that was hit hard by the virus, when there was a sharp increase in the number of people registering as freelancers, with an average of 20,000 to 30,000 people signing up per week.

This was a 50% increase! The number of freelancers logging into the platform rose from 50,000 to about 65,000.

Even though this could be an indicator that some people were losing their full-time jobs, and consequently looking for new sources of income online, another contributing factor was that people were spending more time at home and learning more about freelance life.

On the client side, it was interesting to see how the lockdown was affecting one another.

When the uncertainty began, companies took measures to “freeze everything” en masse, and the number of clients decreased in the early stages, but by the time week 10 rolled around, companies began to understand that they had to adapt to a new normal (working from home, digitalisation, selling online and so on) and those changes began to counteract the initial trend.

By week 15, the number of clients was slightly higher than when the pandemic began, and the demand for professionals specialised in digital transformation increased.

The new low-touch economy

So what is next? What will be talked about in the next few months?

Although some are optimistic about vaccines, it is estimated that a return to pre-Covid-19 levels will not be possible until next year. But the world cannot put itself on hold anymore, so the rules of a new “low-touch” economy will have to be followed.

Generally speaking, this means that social distancing, mobility restrictions and healthcare will be critical in every respect at work, lifestyle and socialising.

What are the new low-touch trends in the work world?

Companies at the cutting edge, Google, Facebook, and Twitter, to name a few, were some of the first to send their employees home and not rush them back to the office.

In fact, many are already adopting a permanent remote work model. Workana closed its office before any lockdown was made official, in part because the company was already used to teleworking and partly because of social responsibility.

But what about the companies that reluctantly moved their operations to remote work when they had no other choice?

Now they are seeing that they do not need offices as much as they thought, and they are even saving time and resources by working remotely.

Stay tuned for Part 2 coming up soon.

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