10 Ways The Pandemic Will Change Our Lives Forever

How we work, learn, travel, entertain ourselves … will never return to the old normal

- Indu Bhushan

Helen Keller famously said, “A bend in the road is not the end of the road … Unless you fail to make the turn.” Faced with the crisis of the century, we have made many turns, modifying our lifestyle in unimaginable ways. Some of these changes are here to stay.

1. Work from home or, more correctly, work from anywhere, will become a much more accepted norm. While organisations had often balked at the thought of their staff working remotely before the pandemic, the last two years have confirmed that this does not necessarily reduce productivity. Various studies have shown that a hybrid approach that combines work from anywhere with traditional office-based work will become the preferred approach with both employees as well as employers.

2. A significant proportion of major meetings, seminars and conferences will be held online or in hybrid mode, facilitating greater participation of wellknown national and international speakers, drawing larger audiences and democratising access to global discussions, reducing costs and carbon footprints. In response to needs, digital platforms have evolved to make participation very close to the real experience, facilitate multiple-track interactions and support recording and archiving. Given that meetings and conferences also have the objective of networking, which lends itself less well to online formats, a hybrid approach will be adopted, with most participants and some prominent speakers joining virtually.