COVID-19 has accelerated these workforce trends with unprecedented swiftness, as leaders shift business models, optimize workforces for virtual infrastructure and collaboration, and adopt more flexible approaches to fulfilling short- and long-term business needs. There is now an urgency around fundamental, systemic workforce changes that organizations may have initially resisted as too radical or difficult to implement. Cultural barriers to adopting flexible models have been forcibly removed. 

This experience has shown us just how vulnerable businesses can be. Amidst seismic market shifts, leaders who don’t drive transformational change risk running their outdated models into the ground. But while the transition may seem brutal, COVID-19 has broken archaic status quos that were prohibiting progress. The weak points now revealed represent golden opportunities when viewed in the context of preexisting cultural barriers.