The term “new normal” has been shaping up our behaviour and our habits in the current pandemic environment. Covid-19 has deeply affected every aspect of our life, our social behaviour, our work culture and our professional lives. Be it at home or at our work place or work from home environment, the pandemic has set several New regulations and norms that we call it as the New Normal. With millions of work force, forced to stay inside their homes, due to lock down and strict measures to stop the virus spread, the world has witnessed a new work culture successfully taking shape, it is work from home or working remotely at a designated place away from your office. Though it has its own pros and cons, it is perhaps the best solution that has been accepted by the working professionals all over the globe.
The pandemic has seen a paradigm shift in the way to deal with our professional life and personal life. In the field of software development where a team work is required every moment, the designers, developers, programmers, QA experts need to work very closely in collaboration with each other, it becomes a bit of challenge when your work station is decentralized and the team members are isolated/away from each other and working remotely from their own spaces. Regardless of the challenges people’s adaptivity to the new normal has been outstanding and we have soon got used to the new working conditions.
But have you thought, what caused this big shift for the software developers? A survey shows that only 5% of the work force in USA were working remotely in the recent past but currently that number has multiplied to millions due to the new pandemic regulations and lock down measures. The IT sector with its software developers had no other choice than to get confined at separate locations and get used to or adapt to the new work culture. What was initially anticipated as a short stop gap arrangement, this New normal seems to be a long haul affair. It’s a reality that this new arrangement is here to stay and this new arrangement is being favoured by the employees working in a software development company.
A recent survey conducted by interviewing several experienced software developers from the IT industry has revealed that about 55% of the employees would prefer to work in an organisation that allows to work remotely from home and about 45% of work force feels that working remotely or work from home is the most essential criteria in this situation and that the company should not have any restrictions to the new norms. The survey further reveals that the new norm of remote working has remarkably improved the work life balance of the employees and the same has a positive effect on the overall productivity.
A majority of the work force in the software development filed believes that remote working norm has drastically reduced their daily stress of commuting to offices, they feel more independent and can choose to work from any place they prefer which is a refreshing change, they are happy to be able to spend quality time with the family members. The software development companies has also benefitted from the new norms as it has helped them to focus more on outsourcing of resources thus reducing liability of employing on company pay rolls. Companies in a quest to reduce overhead costs and manpower load, have found the new norm of remote work, an advantage point.
As the IT industry is gearing up with the new work order and coping up with the digital shift, the mobile app development companies have taken the lead to set an example for the rest. Digital solutions and several digital platforms are being adopted to cope up with the shifting of workspace from an inhouse facility to remote working norm. with the use of multiple platforms enabling real time collaboration between the workforce, it has been easy to streamline the development process for the software developers on a real-time basis. The platforms providing real-time collaboration and flawless communication has been able to handle the change but the managerial aspects of the whole system and the monitoring system was bit more difficult to handle as it took time for the employees and the companies to learn the new rules of the game. Mistakes were made and later rectified with more potent solutions.
What we have today on the brighter side is a new work culture that prefers to work on a remote style, teams working remotely, yet with perfect communication and collaboration, extensive use of latest platforms and the birth of an independent work force that is more cost effective, quality conscious, committed and motivated. The remote work space have made the new age software developers more flexible by shedding off the monotonous nine to five routine, a stress free happy lot of brilliant minds with larger creativity and responsibility.