The COVID-19 global pandemic disrupted labor markets globally and rushed forward the need of working remotely, away from the office, were millions of workers world-wide kept working office-related work from their homes. This kept their workplace and their own businesses going. It resulted in remote working and remote job openings heavily increasing. Studies show that they tripled during these last two years. The United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain registered the highest increase in remote working uptake in Europe but Malta was no stranger to this measure. Maltese companies decided to invest and increase their online presence and online activities, which resulted in many consumers discovering the convenience of e-commerce during the pandemic.
During this year, many of the pandemic introduced measures were lifted and workers started to return to ‘normality’ and therefore back to their office desks but many believe that remote working is here to stay with a quarter of all jobs set to be remote by the end of 2022. On the other hand, work-related statistics already show that sectors involving physical proximity are the ones that will experience the major changes and shift to remote working after the pandemic. So remote working is definitely here to stay. The investiments in online software for remote business is likely to continue as it’s the uptake of virtual meetings. This should also result in a faster adoption of Artificial Intelligence on the workplace.
While the world’s working enviroment is changing to further support an office-remote hybrid setup, many businesses still haven’t adjusted to this scenario. Unfortunately even in Malta we do not have the full legislation in place, sometimes resulting in workers, unions and Government disputes. We are having cases where employers still want their workers to be physically present at the workplace when their work can be done remotely, and in this way reduce costs. Remote working post-pandemic is a reality and therefore we need to be prepared for it. We need to have more laws in place that regulate this type of working condition, more education, more resources and funds that help companies to be prepared for remote working in the post-pandemic world.
Naturally after this there are much broader implications to our employment landscape locally, such as recruitment, management, tax, citizenship etc, all of which we will be covering in our next blogs, so watch this space and find out how you can navigate this new landscape.
