public health. The Trump administration releases a budget proposal for FY21 that would sharply cut funding for WHO and global health funding.
As of the writing of this book, more than 81 million people have been infected and over 1.8 million have died from the pandemic worldwide. Cases occurred in 188 countries, with many of them seeing their citizens dying from this disease.
The public health response has varied from country to country, with some shutting down immediately and asking citizens to stay home for weeks (e.g. South Korea) and others simply waiting for herd immunity to be achieved (e.g. Sweden). In the United States and many other countries the world over, the pandemic shut down the economy, the schools, and our favorite restaurants. Essential workers (e.g. some in manufacturing and many in grocery stores, farms, meatpacking, and so on) carried on in their work to feed the population, and so also carried the initial brunt of the burden of the disease.
As this happened, teachers learned how to go fully online, parents learned how to teach kids from home, and many organizations required their employees to work remotely. The kitchen table, bedroom, back porch, or home office became many people's only office. Demand for computers, webcams, headsets, desks, standing desks, monitors, and even “desk treadmills” skyrocketed, making some firms scramble to deal with supply, and with some individuals waiting for weeks for key tools they needed to go fully remote.
For years, organizations danced around the work‐from‐home issue. Some workers who sought the flexibility of a work‐from‐home life were denied time and again. Flexible work schedules were a niche area in academic research and even more niche in the actual workplace. Then, COVID‐19 hit, and everyone was “suddenly virtual.” The organizational sciences refer to this event as an equilibrium shift. Although the world had its challenges in October 2019, the economies were humming along at what might be called equilibrium. Then, a sudden and deep shock to the system occurred and fully unfolded over the following few months. In psychology, key events in one's life might be considered flashbulb moments, such as, in the past, “Where were you when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon?” or “Where were you on 9/11?” Now, we have, “Where were you during the COVID‐19 pandemic?”
Like so many knowledge workers, Karin's office became a time capsule of March 2020, with sticky notes on the wall reflecting to‐do lists for projects that were either scrapped or put on hold until a later date. One particularly poignant email from that time from Karin to a client read in part, “Let's reschedule the workshop for June. Surely things will be back to normal by then.” Hindsight, of course, reveals the level of denial or even folly in those words. Even at the end of 2020, attempting to reschedule large group trainings seems ill‐conceived. Luckily, Karin already had been delivering a third of her training virtually for years, but with COVID‐19, that third became 100% of her business practically overnight.
Big events such as these flashbulb moments or lengthy world events (e.g. World War I, World War II, etc.) usually mean big changes. And these big changes usually have a lasting effect. For example, following the events of September 11, 2001, in the United States, the experience of getting on a plane in the U.S. changed forever with long lines for screening passengers, waiting areas forbidden for all but those who held tickets, and shoes removed while screening, among other things. Changes like these sometimes last in the name of safety, while others may remain out of convenience or cost savings. If you are in commercial real estate, consider this your warning. Remote work and the virtual office are big changes caused by a big event that will not be going away.
What Happened to Work?
Work changed for many. With the noted exceptions of many essential workers, the so‐called “knowledge workers” were required to work differently. Instead of commutes and coffee at the corner shop, many began to roll out of bed, dress for success on the top half, make some passable coffee in a home brewing machine, and flip the laptop open for a long day of work from home. We would write our reports, crunch our numbers, take out the garbage, answer some email, fix our child's phone, deal with some urgent texts from a colleague, walk the dog, and log out an hour or two later than we did when we worked in the office. In fact, the average U.S. worker increased their hours worked per day by as much as three hours (Davis and Green 2020).
In this new work‐from‐home environment, we found ourselves no longer meeting with our colleagues face‐to‐face. The face‐to‐face meeting was banished and essentially vanished. Our video cameras came on, our cats started making cameos in our meetings, our children were now understood interruptions, and our pants became optional (hopefully unbeknownst to our colleagues). And with all of these elements of our new normal . . . the rise of the virtual meeting.
What Happened to Meetings?
Just prior to the pandemic in October 2019, Joe had the fortunate chance to collect data concerning virtual meetings with his colleagues at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Although the data was limited to U.S. workers, its meaning increased dramatically as 2020 unfolded. In October 2019, nearly 80% of meetings were face‐to‐face, with less than 4% held over video. A little more than 13% of meetings were classified as hybrid, which refers to meetings where a couple of people may be in one conference room talking to folks in another conference room in another city, or country, via telephone or video conference. Thus, the vast majority of us essentially met face‐to‐face, be it in our office, our conference rooms, at our favorite coffee shops, restaurants, or even bars. As the bar graph below shows, things changed both dramatically and quickly.
After the onset of the pandemic, meetings became suddenly virtual. Workers experienced a 60% jump of meetings on video – almost 20 times the rate from before COVID‐19. Telephone meetings jumped to nearly 25% of our meetings while face‐to‐face meetings were one‐seventh its former total. In other words, we stopped meeting face‐to‐face,
