Introduction
It’s safe to say that the COVID-19 pandemic has completely changed the world in more ways than one. Its spread disrupted everything from our globalized economy, to supply chains, to the stock market, to the ways in which businesses employ and manage their workers. The pandemic forced entire countries to adopt “social distancing” guidelines, and it’s threatened to upend our institutions like education, entertainment, and sports.
It’s quite clear that the world will function much differently in a post-COVID world. But why is this? Have we become smarter? Have we become more flexible in the ways in which we live our daily lives? Perhaps.
In just a few weeks, universities and colleges from all around the world ended their in-person programming and sent their students home, where they were forced to adapt to a virtual curriculum hurriedly assembled by their faculty members. Businesses closed their doors, sent home their workers, and moved forward with virtual meetings and conferences via video platform solutions like Zoom, Google Duo, and Skype. Even the sports industry was impacted, playing without fans and with strict social distancing guidelines in place for players and staff members.
As the latest sign that the post-COVID world could look quite different, Google just announced that they plan on allowing their employees to continue working from home until early 2022. When you really put that into perspective, it’s quite a big deal. Why? Because Google is one of the largest tech companies in the world, with more than 118,000 employees as of 2019. How exactly do they plan to manage these employees? How will they ensure compliance in other countries outside of their HQ? How will they keep costs low?
These are all questions that only Sundar Pichai himself can answer. But, at the end of the day, if Google is doing it, why aren’t you?
This is an important topic that we’re going to explore extensively throughout this eBook. We’ll dissect the very basics of what a Global PEO can do, how they can help your business navigate the transition from a physical workplace to a virtual one, and we’ll pay close attention to the ways in which it can help ensure compliance across the board.
From there, we’ll move into some examples of how a Global PEO can function in a virtual workplace world.