The workplace of the future must acknowledge and embrace a more well-rounded conception of the home and work, including valuing the full range of experiences and responsibilities that all workers face.
The COVID-19 pandemic has presented the world with one of the most perplexing challenges in recent times. Unmatched in scale and impact, it has not only exacted a huge toll on human lives and the healthcare system, but also cost the global economy millions of dollars and jobs. Governments have struggled to get a handle on containing the virus, even while grappling with the crucial question of kickstarting economic activity.
As governments, businesses and communities navigate this crisis, the focus is increasingly turning to recovery and reopening, and eventually returning to the ‘next normal.’ It is now time for policymakers to consider actions that best help businesses reopen safely, while protecting the public and helping restart the economy. With employees slowly returning to work, the world needs a new playbook as the current and virtual worlds collide and reshape both work and home. In the process of adapting to this changed reality, every process, function and role will be re-imagined, fundamentally changing the future of work, workforce and workspace. Amidst this, the key questions are — What are the top policy priorities that should be adopted post-COVID-19? How do we improve the readiness of the public and private sectors to use online tools to move seamlessly to a remote economy? What will the future workforce look like? What will a post-COVID-19 workspace look like?
As a company with over 50,000 employees, these are some key questions that Salesforce has actively engaged with over the past few months. It has worked to leverage its resources, relationships and products to help employees, customers and their communities navigate the crisis. Making decisions is fraught with risk, because nobody has definitive answers about when the situation will improve or end. Even so, Salesforce has built its response, keeping in mind its responsibility as a business to its own staff, customers and the larger society. The playbook has been built on the foundation of its four core values of equality, trust, innovation and customer success, and around three key themes — digital transformation, resilience of the workforce and redesigning the workspace.
This paper aims to examine the post-COVID-19 future of work through the prism of these three pillars that are key to ensuring a smooth recovery, and the attendant opportunities and challenges. First, driving digital transformation, fuelled by universal, high-speed and affordable connectivity, cross-border collaboration(s) with strong data security standards and government policies that support working in a remote economy. Second, building a resilient and healthy workforce, centred on employee wellness and workforce development. Third, evolving a new paradigm of work and workspaces, including a permanent transition to a hybrid work model of office and work-from-home, and a powerful digital command centre that enables a work-anywhere, live anywhere, all-digital environment. How companies confront the opportunities and accompanying challenges will determine their success as we move further.
The global pandemic, which precipitated the overnight shift to a distributed workforce operating remotely, has undoubtedly emerged as the single most significant driver of digital transformation. COVID-19 is the exogenous shock that has driven businesses — small and large — that did not previously have digital transformation on their radar to make the transition to stay afloat. A report by Tally Solutions showed that 94 percent of India’s 6.8 million micro, small and medium enterprises relied on digital infrastructure to stay afloat during the pandemic. <1>
The months following the COVID-19 outbreak have convinced all business leaders about the need to move towards greater data-driven decision-making and digitisation. It is estimated by the International Data Corporation that there will be US$7.4 trillion invested directly in the digital transformation of business operations over the next three years. <2> In India, a report by Nasscom has projected that over 60 percent of small and medium businesses have already adopted cloud with varying levels of maturity, and have the potential to account for a third of the Indian public cloud market. <3>
Technology is the cornerstone of almost all innovation and new ideas aimed at productivity, efficiency, ease and scale, with data at the core of every business, industry and government process. The digital transformation built on data flows and open internet has created a gold mine of information, with businesses and enterprises eager to extract any intelligence to finetune their product or service to their targeted customer.
The pandemic’s forced changes have further accelerated the need to amplify the best digital organisational tools to enable a seamless form of cross-functional, collaborative and remote work. It has catalysed transformation across business models, channels and touchpoints, driven by the need for greater organisational agility and a tighter engagement with clients. <4> The need to respond, adapt and thrive in a post-COVID-19 world has led business leaders to embrace a slew of digital services and integrate them into their business operations, leading to wide-ranging innovation, producing unique, digitally-enabled solutions across sectors such as education, health and financial services. To tackle a multi-pronged problem such as the one posed by the pandemic, including health risk, cessation of travel, closure of offices and a decentralised workforce, businesses need an armoury of modern technologies, applications and processes that help them overcome all of these, while ensuring the safety of their staff and success of their business.
Take, for example, Salesforce’s Work.com, a suite of solutions and resources produced in a of a few weeks, designed specifically to enable organisations and businesses to respond to and recover from the challenges of COVID-19, and thereafter, to reopen safely. <5> This suite of products includes expert medical advice, a crisis command centre to manage return-to-work-readiness, solutions for contact tracing, emergency response management, shift management and employee wellness assessments. Salesforce has used this product in-house to track the situation in each of its markets. Based on its own standards, coupled with prevailing government regulations, Salesforce has reopened offices in a phased, calibrated manner in South Korea, Japan, New Zealand and Hong Kong.
However, the process of digitally transforming a business is not always going to be uncomplicated and rapid. Despite technology companies democratising access to a slew of new and emerging sophisticated digital services — like machine learning, deep learning and cloud computing — to customers ranging from large corporates to small and medium-sized businesses, challenges persist. These include a lack of access to high-speed, affordable internet, suboptimal privacy and data security standards, a regulatory landscape that hampers rather than enables cross-border remote work, and a lack of preparedness to upskill the workforce.
While by no means intractable, these challenges have profound, long-term implications on various fronts, and if businesses are to succeed, then it is crucial to put in place mechanisms that facilitate digital transformation. Some solutions that would achieve this are ensuring high-speed, universal, affordable, secure connectivity; enabling cross-border collaboration with strong data privacy and security standards; cloud-first government procurement policies and cloud incentives to the private sector for remote health, education and work; and transformation of the global workforce with STEM education and reskilling.
With the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the global workforce was already in the throes of a constant churn, with the conversation focused on the importance of skilling, reskilling and upskilling. The new demands of the workplace have given it a further impetus. With technology blurring the divide between the physical and digital worlds, businesses have often struggled to match the pace of innovation. With the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, companies are dealing with a business environment where customer preferences are starkly different from the pre-COVID-19 workspace — physical distancing, enhanced digital-first or digital-only experiences, and reconfigured production and supply lines are now the norm. Such drastic changes will in turn demand significantly different workforce capabilities, including a sharp rise in home-based remote operations and a need for shop floor personnel to perform new tasks, all while adhering to strict safety guidelines. <6>
The pandemic will also further augment adoption of digital technologies like cloud offerings, Internet of Things (IoT), augmented reality/virtual reality, artificial intelligence (AI) and 3D printing to achieve smaller, less complex tasks and to complete tasks where these technologies can be used in a cost-effective manner. These new and emerging technologies will significantly reshape the workforce. As per a World Economic Forum report, for the 75 million jobs that may be displaced by a shift in the division of labour among humans and machines, 133 million new jobs will be created — a net gain of 58 million jobs. <7>
The transformational impact of AI is not lost on hiring managers, and as per a Salesforce Research survey, a majority believe that AI, followed by the IoT and big data, will have the largest impact on the workforce’s productivity and innovation. <8> The survey also showed that 59 percent of managers believe the rise of AI will have a substantial impact on the types of skills their companies need, especially new and expanded skills sets such as data analysis, software creation and management, emotional intelligence and creative thinking. Similarly, a McKinsey report suggests that in Europe and the US, the demand for technological skills is expected to rise by 50 percent; complex cognitive skills by 33 percent; and high-level emotional and social skills, such as initiative-taking, leadership and entrepreneurship by 30 percent. <9> In contrast, the demand for physical and manual labour to perform repeat predictable tasks, and basic literacy and numeracy skills, will fall by 30 percent and 20 percent respectively. Newer technologies will significantly alter the skill profiles of future jobs, and workers will have to equip themselves with the requisite skills to stay relevant in a competitive job market.
Businesses can deploy several approaches to address skill gaps, including hiring externally for specialised and technical roles, retraining existing staff to prepare for newly created job roles. Illustration: Malte Mueller/GettyDespite acknowledging the importance of skilling and workforce development programmes in navigating the constantly changing jobs landscape, many businesses are still slow to act. A survey by Salesforce Research on the Future of Workforce Development showed that 70 percent of managers believe formalised workforce training programmes will benefit employee productivity, while 69 percent believe they will boost preparedness for future disruptions and innovation. And despite 68 percent of hiring managers seeing formalised retraining programmes as valuable, only 46 percent considered it a “high” priority — a dissonance that poses a severe threat to workers’ livelihoods and companies’ talent pipelines. <10> Surprisingly, aside from budgetary constraints and lack of employee time, the survey did not find any significant inhibitor to modernisation of workforce development, prompting questions on reasons for the inertia and inaction among companies to undertake retraining, and pointing to a more worrying reason — lack of urgency. Workforce development approaches also vary greatly across sectors, with financial services staying ahead of the curve in apprenticeships and engaging underrepresented groups, and technology companies acting fast on rolling out online training resources, while consumer products and retail were found to lag behind the others.
Businesses can deploy several approaches to address skill gaps, including hiring externally for specialised and technical roles, retraining existing staff to prepare for newly created job roles, or a mix of both by deploying a fluid workforce consisting of temporary and flexible jobs, including a skilled, contractual workforce for non-core functions based on demonstrated competencies, as per a McKinsey report on the future of work. <11> Walmart, for example, is investing US$4 billion over four years to train and transition frontline and back-office jobs to new customer service roles, while professional services company Manpower has partnered with the education company Pearson to upskill 130,000 workers over the next five years. <12>
Salesforce has been an early and ardent advocate of skilling and reskilling people for jobs of the future, not only as a strategic business decision for the company investing in its own future to build a talent pipeline, but also to provide a level-playing field. Trailhead is Salesforce’s free online learning platform, which makes learning accessible to all — where one can access fast- and self-paced modules, learn valuable skills, earn credentials and college credits, and connect to new opportunities. <13> The Trailhead platform was borne out of the belief that providing a dynamic model of education is not only about equality, a core company value, but also that everyone should be a life-long learner, and the pandemic has proven just how important that is. And although traditional education will always be important, it is also unattainable for many people, or it may not teach them all the specific skills required for a current job. As a result, many people are looking for more convenient ways to educate themselves on a range of things — from mid-career professionals and those looking to change career tracks, to young school children, business people, retired veterans and budding developers, amongst others. Trailhead has been successful in the Asia Pacific region, especially during the lockdown, and India has the second-highest number of badges outside of the US. Between March and May 2020, Trailhead saw a 70 percent uptick in youth signups, with over half a million users earning more than six million badges for successfully completing their modules on different topics. This is significant, given the huge need for re-skilling in India, with only 5 percent of the current workforce having undergone formal vocational skill training, as per the Indian Skill Development Ministry’s figures. <14> In the post-COVID-19 era, skilling is going to be the single most important type of insurance against redundancy, unemployment and professional stagnation.
While one outcome of the pandemic’s impact has been an increased focus on skills and capabilities, the discourse around the workforce has otherwise been framed in broad, mechanical terms, be it government action for citizens, or a company’s benefits for employees. But it is imperative to remember that at the heart of this understanding must be the mental and emotional upheaval wreaked on individuals. The blurring of boundaries between home and work, the assumption of availability on the phone round-the-clock, rise of overwork especially in white-collar professions, combined with added caregiving responsibilities, led to a situation where people, early on in the crisis, began to severely feel its psychological impact. The large-scale job losses, poor health, and anxiety and loneliness triggered by self-isolation severely affected the mental health of people around the world. <15> A poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation in July found that more than half of the US’s adult population reported that COVID-19-related stress and worry negatively impacted their mental health — up 14 percent from a similar poll conducted two months prior — with women, black adults, younger adults and people struggling financially due to the pandemic’s financial impact likelier to suffer. <16> Though there is no corresponding data on mental health available in India, anecdotal evidence of death by suicides and psychological impacts like depression, anxiety and worry due to COVID-19 suggests a similar situation.
Salesforce learned early on, through regular mental resilience surveys, that a third of its workforce reported that the quarantine was having a negative impact on their emotions. <17> In its efforts to support employees, the company has a ‘Be Well’ call scheduled daily to help employees with virtual meditations and mindfulness exercises. Salesforce’s executive leadership team hosts a weekly call for all of its over 50,000 employees. Thriving Mind, a programme aimed to strengthen psychological and emotional health by understanding stressors and using actionable strategies to manage anxiety, has been made available to all employees and their immediate families free of cost. Meredith Flynn-Ripley, vice president of product at Salesforce, explained how not being at work in-person, not experiencing the finite ending of a workday, and living instead in a time warp with no memory of commuting or of having a water-cooler chat with colleagues was also taking a psychological toll on employees. In some countries such as Japan and Hong Kong, where living spaces may be small, this can be heightened. The product team factored these subliminal stimuli into their product as “solutions,” like building alerts to stand up and walk around, or do a virtual treasure hunt, or engage (online) in a water-cooler chat with colleagues to approximately replicate the previous experiences that employees yearned for. <18> In India too, Salesforce CEO Arundhati Bhattacharya has repeatedly emphasised the importance of giving employees the right tools to help create a healthy work-life balance, including prioritising their mental health.
It is important then to ensure that mental health of people remains a central pillar of the state and business communities’ response. While such deep-seated challenges are not going to be easy to overcome, the silver lining of the crisis has definitely helped identify priorities — adequate healthcare and an inclusive, broad-based social security framework for a resilient workforce. <19>
With COVID-19 keeping a large part of the workforce home, the reality of juggling the twin responsibilities of work and home is finally hitting hard. Illustration: SDI Productions/GettyIn addition to mapping the skills readiness and resilience of workers, it is also important to knit this into the organisation’s decision-making processes and structures. Historically, the norms of an organisation’s structure, day-to-day operations and company culture have been set by men, while women have been largely kept out of leadership and important decision-making roles. As such, despite significant gains in job opportunities and legal protections afforded to women, long-standing stereotypes about gender roles, women’s skills and abilities, and their domestic responsibilities have limited their workplace success. And while the pandemic has reinforced some barriers that undermine women’s prospects, it has also in some ways refocused attention on these barriers, not least of all because these are issues that men are only beginning to face on a large scale now.
With COVID-19 keeping a large part of the workforce home, the reality of juggling the twin responsibilities of work and home, including caregiving for the young and elderly, medical care for the sick, and household chores, is finally hitting home. Despite most companies quickly moving to offer work-from-home to their employees, the experience has been neither uniform nor easy across social, economic and professional groups. Among women who tend to assume most caregiving responsibilities, this flexibility is more likely to be offered to those in higher-paying roles and in white-collar jobs. For jobs like domestic housekeeping, which are not designed for remote work, and especially those forms of employment that are casual and informal, it becomes even more important to focus on ensuring strong social protection, such as access to paid leave and other support measures. These basic actions should be combined with analysing employee experiences internally and rooting out biases and stereotypes, whether they relate to power structures, inequality, or a lack of representation. <20>
The first step is to identify disparities using strong equity benchmarks and internal assessments, an exercise that should help establish actionable, measurable targets for progress. This can be done through internal anonymised surveys and equity assessments to review employee experiences, such as the one Salesforce initiated in 2015 to analyse worker compensation. An internal audit on pay difference uncovered a statistical difference between men and women — through the whole company, every department, every division and every geography. Over the course of four years, Salesforce spent US$10.3 million to ensure equal pay for equal work and correct compensation differences by gender, race and ethnicity. Of those who required adjustments, 39 percent were women, 54 percent were men, while seven percent of the adjustments were due to race and ethnicity. This also illustrates the responsibility of creating an enabling environment for young women, which rests equally, if not more, on men as on women, as well as for such change to come right from the top leadership.
The workplace of the future must also acknowledge and embrace a more well-rounded conception of the home and work, including valuing the full range of experiences and responsibilities that all workers face. This aspect has received some attention in the months since the COVID-19 outbreak due to the undiscriminating nature of the coronavirus that has forced the typical decision-makers in a company (highly educated, wealthy, white) to retreat into the same traditionally feminine space of the household as the rest of their employees, from where they are expected to balance both their work and household duties.
The process of making the workplace a more diverse, inclusive, equitable and safe one is not a one-time intervention, but rather a continuing one that will require regular and continuous assessments, reporting mechanisms, diversity practices and training to understand and address power imbalances, problematic mindsets and implicit biases.
What, then, should the workplace of the future look like? In her piece on the future of work, Jocelyn Frye suggests that companies must work to build a workplace that does not have the same built-in barriers that have been used for decades to undermine the advancement of women, limit their opportunities and depress their wages. <21> She adds that the workplace must be one free of discrimination, where caregiving responsibilities do not hamper any candidate’s job prospects, where pay-gaps are non-existent, and where women are not restricted into a narrow range of jobs with low wages and poor growth prospects. More broadly, it is also a culture that embraces diverse perspectives, encourages collaboration between staff and management leadership across levels, and is responsive to the needs of individuals.
As COVID-19 exploded around the world in early 2020, businesses across the globe were very quick to pivot to a remote form of working as the best way to limit non-essential physical interaction and to curb the spread of the virus. The first nine months of 2020 saw business processes change with unprecedented scale and speed, with every industry moving from the traditional, textbook methods to a more agile and iterative mode of functioning.
Slowly, as people begin to ‘return to work,’ the key questions each company is asking are — Is remote working the next normal? Are companies permanently moving to a hybrid model combining a mix of work-from-home and office-based work? How do companies prepare for this? What effects, if any, is this likely to have on their day-to-day functioning?
Perhaps, no work practice has seen wider acceptance and adoption as has work-from-home in the months since the COVID-19 outbreak. Typically dismissed by most industries as impractical or unrealistic in the long-term or at scale, it has been their go-to solution to ensure business continuity planning. Initially met with scepticism, remote work has come to be seen as a good enough alternative to on-site work. According to job portal Naukri.com, during the lockdown period, there has been a three-fold increase in the number of remote work roles that employers are hiring for in India, half of which are in the business process outsourcing/IT-enabled services. <22>
Businesses have realised that employees will work even without someone peering over their shoulders, or without clocking their hours. Business have also realised that work can be done as long as there is access to devices, connectivity and other resources, with demonstrated gains in efficiency and productivity. This has also led to a new level of trust between management and staff.
Going forward, the COVID-19 induced slowdown will put tremendous pressure on companies to cut costs and stay afloat, given job losses and businesses shutting down. <23> With some companies announcing their intention to cut their physical presence, and several others extending the offer to employees to work-from-home for another year, many have sounded the death knell on commercial real estate. <24> However, despite the demonstrable productivity gains without a footprint, it is neither the moment to announce the demise of skyscrapers and business districts nor the time to determine that companies are moving permanently to work-from-home.
For one, businesses that require employees to be on-site for in-person, collaborative or customer meetings, will require more space to ensure adequate physical distancing, at least until a vaccine is ready, leading to less dense workspaces. Secondly, work-from-home has not been a smooth, easy and better-than-the-office experience for all, with many employees struggling with physical space and juggling work with caregiving and domestic housework. A survey conducted by Salesforce Research on the prospects of returning to work showed that 64 percent wanted to spend at least some time working a few hours at an office, store or factory, while only 37 percent respondents viewed full-time remote work as the most appealing long-term scenario, significantly different from previous rounds that found a higher interest among workers to extend remote working. <25>
The upshot of the new arrangement has been a shake-up in many norms of corporate culture — enhanced top-down communication across businesses, with many managers, even CEOs, talking directly to employees to touch base with them, enquire about their well-being, and help understand and deploy their skillsets better.
At the workplace, employees and their wellness and experiences are at the heart of workspace design in the post-COVID-19 era. Illustration: Nadia Bormotova — iStock/GettyAt the same time, this shift has not been free from some concerns. The sharp spike in workplace surveillance, brought on by long-standing ideas of using physical presence as proof of productivity, have led companies to rely on tools like monitoring of screen-time or keystrokes to track workers.<26> This is not only harmful for employees’ privacy rights, it also has “detrimental effects on employee morale” and can cause anxiety among workers. Additionally, the lack of physical proximity and the bonhomie arising out of in-person interactions in shared physical spaces poses a hurdle not only to new hires who are only partially integrated with the company and its culture, but also existing employees who rely on their co-workers to brainstorm, unwind and evolve together.
Meanwhile at the workplace, employees and their wellness and experiences are at the heart of workspace design in the post-COVID-19 era. Businesses of all types face complex challenges as they prepare a standard operating procedure to reopen their workplace. With COVID-19 cases continuing to rise in many countries, governments have maintained partial lockdowns and limited public transport, meaning that a return to work will initially see low occupancy and a slow, phased opening up. An early casualty might be the once-hallowed open-plan office, giving way to plexiglass partitions between employees to separate desks, accompanied by contactless entryways, unobtrusive furniture and one-way lanes to prevent employees accidentally bumping into each other. Technology will be at the heart of facilitating and designing a safe and collaborative workspace to enhance employee experience and ensure their wellness and comfort, through tools like desk bookings and shift management to manage occupancy, digital signages, and data-driven decisions by HR managers and office administrators.
Early in the lockdown, Salesforce recognised the need for precisely such a tech-enabled, data-driven, location-agnostic yet space-efficient tool that would help companies and communities to reopen safely. Work.com is a set of new technology solutions and resources to help business and community leaders around the world re-skill employees, and reopen safely and efficiently on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Command Center brings all data streams together and provides a 360-degree view of return-to-work readiness across locations, employees and visitors, allowing businesses to make data-driven decisions, and to act and communicate effectively. Employee wellness allows companies to create employee health surveys, and monitor trends and use the data to make decisions about returning to work. Shift management enables organisations to orchestrate the eventual return of employees to the office in a manner that reduces office density by avoiding larger groups, maintaining spatial distance and ensuring scheduling breaks. Contact tracing allows public and private sector leaders to manually trace health and relationship contacts in a safe and private manner, by collecting data from individuals who are infected or potentially exposed to an infectious disease and creating visual maps of contacts and locations to monitor potential interactions and outbreak. Emergency response management allows public health organisations, government agencies and the private sector to manage all types of emergencies, deliver care to those affected and allocate resources quickly. Other functionalities to consider are skilling programmes that help employees with out-of-the-box training, and management of volunteers and grants that allows organisations to streamline volunteer coordination and automating the grants lifecycle for greater impact.
Companies are experimenting at an unprecedented velocity to keep up with the curveballs thrown at them by the COVID-19-induced global flux, with policy reforms, reshaping of the workforce, new management practices, changing company culture and new infrastructure. But firefighting the ongoing crisis is going to require support at the government level as well. Policymakers must join hands with businesses to understand their needs and imperatives and take the steps required to revitalise the economy. Some key policy issues that require attention and intervention while charting the path forward are — how to bridge the gaps along gender, race, and urban-rural divides? What does the future of offline businesses look like? What kind of social security nets will the large proportion of the workforce, especially casual workers or daily-wagers or those most affected by the pandemic, require? How can one ensure wider equality of access to better technologies to enable people to stay connected to the economy? How can virtual spaces be made safer? What are the hurdles standing in the way of a progressive regulatory landscape on issues like cross-border collaboration, working remotely, and universal and affordable high-speed connectivity?
The last few months have shown how agile and responsive the Indian government has been to the tech industry’s needs, easing their way into remote and distributed work with timely and laudable decisions, such as liberating the work-from-home regime. <27> While by no means a minor challenge, this could very well be India’s moment to turn it into an opportunity by establishing itself as a leader of the knowledge economy. These changes to workforce development have the potential to drive more opportunities, while at the same time building a more future-proof workforce. Such reskilling and upskilling initiatives, newly created talent pipelines, and intra- and cross-industry repurposing of human capital will not only help those displaced by the current turn of events, but also provide access to training and opportunities to those who previously did not have a seat at the table. <28>
India has the largest pool of tech talent (with a workforce of 4.5 million, and revenues of US$190 billion worldwide for the IT services industry) with considerable industry expertise and ability to provide high-quality services at a competitive price. This is a good time for Indians to seize the opportunity that emerges from the offshoring of work that will ensue. This will require a move to invest heavily in a digital-first future, to realign the education system to emphasise skills and hands-on training, and work across disciplines and institutional boundaries to become a core part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution by investing and innovating in emerging technologies like AI, blockchain, education-technology and IoT.
This toolkit is only a starting point to help companies prepare for the workforce and workplace of the future — companies are likely to adopt a hybrid model, including remote and safe on-site work categorised by work function or number of days a week; a distributed workforce to guard against the possibility of any one geographic region getting critically affected; and off-shoring of non-core services that can be performed remotely and cost-effectively; and off-loading own spaces in favour of co-working spaces to cut down on recurring high rental and maintenance costs. The move to allow workers more flexibility to work remotely should be accompanied by expanded caregiving protections, support for a work setup at home, and finally, robust security and privacy practices. <29> The COVID-19 pandemic has given the world a new paradigm of work, one which requires building resilience, both in the workforce and at the workspace.
<1> “94% of MSMEs relied on IT infrastructure during the lockdown to stay afloat: Tally”, Express Computer, September 17, 2020.
<2> “Direct Digital Transformation Investment Spending to Approach $7.4 Trillion Between 2020 and 2023; IDC Reveals 2020 Worldwide Digital Transformation Predictions”, IDC, October 31, 2019.
<3> “Indian SMBs can account for 30 of India’s public cloud market”, ET Online, September 18, 2020.
<4> Prabhjeet Bhatla, “In the Coming Years, There Will be No Non-Digital Business: Arundhati Bhattacharya”, Entrepreneur, August 24, 2020.
<6> Kweilin Ellingrud, Rahul Gupta, and Julian Salguero, “Building the vital skills for the future of work in operations”, McKinsey & Company, August 7, 2020.
<7> The Future of Jobs 2018, World Economic Forum.
<8> The Future of Workforce Development, Salesforce Research.
<9> Kweilin Ellingrud, Rahul Gupta, and Julian Salguero, “Building the vital skills for the future of work in operations”, McKinsey & Company, August 7, 2020.
<10> The Future of Workforce Development, Salesforce Research.
<11> Kweilin Ellingrud, Rahul Gupta, and Julian Salguero, “Building the vital skills for the future of work in operations”, McKinsey & Company, August 7, 2020.
<12> Ellingrud et al., Building the vital skills for the future of work in operations
<13> “Skill Up for the Future”, Trailhead.
<14> Annual Report 2016-17, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Government of India.
<15> Jocelyn Frye, “Centering Equity in the Future-of-Work Conversation is Critical for Women’s Progress”, Center for American Progress, July 24, 2020.
<16> Meera Jagannathan, “Advice for Salesforce staff who reported having a mental-health issue – and all workers during the COVID-19 pandemic”, MarketWatch, September 1, 2020.
<17> Jagannathan, Advice for Salesforce staff who reported having a mental-health issue – and all workers during the COVID-19 pandemic
<18> “The Future of Work and Workspaces”, Youtube, uploaded by Observer Research Foundation, July 18, 2020.
<19> Sangeet Jain, “The coronavirus has hurtled unprepared economies into the future of work”, Observer Research Foundation, April 29, 2020,
<20> Jocelyn Frye, “Centering Equity in the Future-of-Work Conversation is Critical for Women’s Progress”, Center for American Progress, July 24, 2020.
<21> Frye, Centering Equity in the Future-of-Work Conversation is Critical for Women’s Progress
<22> “Work from home jobs increase by 300% in India”, ET Now News, September 8, 2020,
<23> Sangeet Jain, “Reimagining the Future of Workspaces”, Observer Research Foundation, June 1, 2020.
<24> Uri Berliner, “Get a Comfortable Chair Permanent Work from Home is Coming”, NPR, June 22, 2020.
<25> “New Survey Data Shows Possible Scenarios for the Future of Offices, Commuting, and Cities”, Salesforce, July 2, 2020.
<26> Sangeet Jain, “Reimagining the Future of Workspaces”, Observer Research Foundation, June 1, 2020.
<27> “Government to IT employees: Work from home till December 31”, Moneycontrol News, July 22, 2020.
<28> “Preparing for the Future of Work”, World Economic Forum.
<29> Jocelyn Frye, “The Disproportionate Economic Effects of the Coronavirus Pandemic on Women of Color”, Center for American Progress, April 23, 2020.
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Manavi Jain leads government outreach and policy advocacy efforts for Salesforce India.
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