Image: Shutterstock/fizkes Image: Shutterstock/fizkes This article is part of Business Futures, a series tackling the key issues shaping Irish business today and in the future. If you’re part of that future, you might want to know that TheJournal.ie has partnered with UCD Smurfit School to offer one reader a full scholarship for the Modular Executive MBA worth more than €30,000. Find out more here.
But how many of those changes will survive beyond the pandemic and what arguments has Covid-19 made more for non-traditional working arrangements?Launched in 2015, the UK-anchored digital bank boasts 1.2 million Irish customers and over 2,000 employees across the world. “Revolut’s employees have adapted well to remote working with 98% saying they’d adapted well and 90% of team leaders saying that performance was unaffected,” the company said.
For many businesses, the pandemic has broken down much of the resistance to alternative workplace arrangements, she explains.“There was a sort of underlying theme of, ‘Yeah, but will people really be working at home? You might have good intentions but will your kids pull you away?’ Then [there were concerns] about things like security and all of that.
Related Reads 25.01.21 How is Ireland's top business school delivering its MBA programme in the middle of a pandemic? 20.01.21 Greenwashing, green finance and emissions: Is Irish business doing its part in the fight against climate change? 18.01.21 Looking at career options? TheJournal.ie and UCD Smurfit School have an MBA Scholarship for one reader
“So I think the genie is out of the bottle, but I do think that there’s a diversity of needs. ‘Age and stage’ has a lot to do with it,” she says.Radical changeShe is a director of ICE Group, a Galway-based recruitment firm that employs 58 people in its headquarters, all of whom had to quickly adapt to remote working at the outset of the pandemic.
But that is the absolute opposite to what we’ve actually experienced with people having that additional day off. We’ve structured it around the weekend — what we say here is that we’re the home of a three-day weekend —but that additional day, just to clear your head… really makes a difference. Cox believes that a greater appreciation of the time we spend outside of work is going to be one of the lasting effects of the pandemic.