No question that the battle with COVID19 has had a very bad impact to the economy globally, but what impact has it had to the introduction of the 4iR into the global economy? The truth is that it has actually fast tracked the progress. Companies had to close doors to prevent human interaction and with it the spread, this has impacted these companies financially and otherwise but also teaching them to do things differently.
So many have been forced to continue operating even though it was digitally, meetings held virtually, which will ease the flow of traffic when this has become a way of life. Many organizations have had this ability to operate virtually but were never encouraged to do so and with this pandemic the leaders of such organization have now been introduced to this ability. I have always since the early 2000 spoke about the benefit of some jobs being performed remotely, we don’t need some administrators to wake up in the morning get stuck in traffic both morning and afternoon loosing over 4 hours in traffic only to come work for 3 hrs at the office when they could have done more at home. Companies have realized that they don’t need as much office space as they had occupied prior. The banking sector through the use of mobile apps has shown that the is probably no need to go to the bank.
Service sector could have done better if they had robots serving people, health sector as well. Deliveries using drones, virtual PAs, virtual classrooms for schooling, the cleaning industry could use robot cleaners, etc. The traveling and tourism could have benefited greatly through virtual tourism while people were at home during lockdown, this would have assisted in also assisting many deal with the depression caused by a lockdown. so after this we definitely now have realized how we less of an impact our lives could have experience if we were in the middle of the 4iR.
So many have been forced to continue operating even though it was digitally, meetings held virtually, which will ease the flow of traffic when this has become a way of life. Many organizations have had this ability to operate virtually but were never encouraged to do so and with this pandemic the leaders of such organization have now been introduced to this ability. I have always since the early 2000 spoke about the benefit of some jobs being performed remotely, we don’t need some administrators to wake up in the morning get stuck in traffic both morning and afternoon loosing over 4 hours in traffic only to come work for 3 hrs at the office when they could have done more at home. Companies have realized that they don’t need as much office space as they had occupied prior. The banking sector through the use of mobile apps has shown that the is probably no need to go to the bank.
Service sector could have done better if they had robots serving people, health sector as well. Deliveries using drones, virtual PAs, virtual classrooms for schooling, the cleaning industry could use robot cleaners, etc. The traveling and tourism could have benefited greatly through virtual tourism while people were at home during lockdown, this would have assisted in also assisting many deal with the depression caused by a lockdown. so after this we definitely now have realized how we less of an impact our lives could have experience if we were in the middle of the 4iR.
