COVID-19 Changed the Way We Work. How Much of That Change Will be Permanent?
Emergency/Disaster Preparedness is a term with which most of us are familiar. In its simplest definition, it refers to measures taken to prepare for and reduce the effects of an emergency or disaster.
As providers of services for people with intellectual disabilities and autism, we have devoted significant time and resources to make certain that our agencies were prepared in the event of an emergency or disaster. We’ve gone to great lengths to ensure the health and safety of our employees and the people we support in the event of an emergency or natural disaster. We have evacuation plans in case of fire or flood, and we practice them regularly. We have a back-up plan for any of our services that are disrupted. We even have a back-up plan for our data, in case on-site servers are destroyed or otherwise inoperable. We have painstakingly reviewed our emergency/disaster plans with a fine-toothed comb to ensure that all the appropriate systems, procedures, and resources were in place. We thought were ready for anything. Then, COVID-19 happened. And we realized that we weren’t ready for anything – because we hadn’t anticipated a scenario wherein the entire world would shut down for a couple months.
In the early days of this pandemic, we looked to technology to allow our administrative and support staff to be able to work remotely so we could continue to manage the day-to-day functions of our organizations. We got a crash course in video conferencing software like Zoom™, Teams™, Google Hangouts™, and GoToMeeting™, so we could meet and collaborate with each other, and help the people we support stay connected to friends and family.
Prior to the pandemic, only a handful of us even had a remote-work policy, and it probably wasn’t designed to handle a situation where everyone would work remotely while experiencing the crisis we are in right now. In other words, it wasn’t structured to support employees working from home while also dealing with health-related challenges or caring for their children or other dependents.
Additionally, technology has not been prioritized in our field; often viewed as an unnecessary expense while most of us operate on a shoestring budget. But in recent months, we have relied heavily on technology to communicate, ensure stability and business continuity, to get food and supplies for the people we support, to help people see a doctor, pay bills, stay connected, and entertained. It could be said that COVID-19 highlighted just how critical technology is to the business of taking care of people.
Someday, hopefully in the not-too-distant future, this will all be over. There will be a vaccine for COVID-19, and life will return to some kind of normalcy. But right now we are in the midst of a pivotal moment – the biggest remote-work experiment in our history. We need to take stock of what’s working and what isn’t. Can any of the temporary solutions we’ve established become permanent change in the organization? Do we really need that big office space? Can we save money by having more virtual meetings? How has technology helped us to work more efficiently?
What the system looks like moving forward is anybody’s guess. Will we go back to the status quo that it was before the pandemic? Or will we use the best-practice lessons we’ve gained from this crisis to create lasting system-wide change?
There’s no playbook for our current scenario. This pandemic has forced all of us to reevaluate how we operate from day-to-day. Once we reach the other side, it will be important to apply the lessons we’ve learned from the experience to create a road map that better prepares us for the future.
