Lots of talk about this – right here, right now – being the “New Normal”. Not to be the bucket of water, but we have not peaked in this pandemic yet. We have not felt the full effects of this virus yet.
Everyone is suggesting that people will continue to work at home. No they will NOT. Here are a few reasons why:
- Shitty or no broadband at home.
- No room to work from home.
- Doesn’t want to or unable to work from home
- Managers can barely manage workers they can see, let alone manage remote workers.
- Does everyone think commercial leases will just dry up?
- Culture.
- Lack of training on tools like Collab prevent good collab.
- I could go on!
Some folks may enjoy it and want to continue working from home – at least a couple of times a week.
Personally, I am seeing every platform – GoToMeeting, Zoom, UberConference, FreeCC, et al – buckle under the strain. Freezing screens, crashes, and the like. Newbies are not enjoying that at all.
The residential network of voice and broadband are not made for most people to work from home – as we are now witnessing.
HOAs are clamping down on people working from home by reminding residents of the commercial clauses in their agreements. That’s nice, huh?
People in our industry are certainly hopeful that the UC&C seats sold in the last 2 months remain in place, but a percentage (half?) will bounce back to the office.
Right now, these tools are in a free trial. When businesses open back up to full capacity and look at the invoices – and then see how many customers they lost – that’s when the New Normal will hit. Here in Tampa we are already seeing small businesses close for good.
On a call today, a TEM expert reminded the group that no one is checking the P&L right now. They are fire fighting to stay alive. After that settles down, they will go back to the P&L sheet with a red pen. Then we will see.
I won’t even get into the ripple effect of the Stimulus bill’s $2 Trillion spend; state, county and city tax losses; government budget short falls; and bankruptcies of small businesses and people that is sure to follow. This will have an immense effect on consumer spending (which powers our economy), consumer confidence and business behavior.