Researchers at Wilfrid Laurier Universityโs Lazaridis School of Business and Economics conducted a recent research study that found that 75 per cent of Ontario technology firms surveyed would opt to have a portion of employees return to work in office if COVID-19 stay-at-home orders were lifted tomorrow.
The Laurier research team had been surveying tech firms every six months as part of a two-year study before COVID-19 hit, which diverted their focus to pandemic-related challenges.
โWeโve been doing that now for over a year, and as we were getting ready for our third round of data collection, [COVID-19] hit,โ Nicole Coviello, a professor of marketing and the Lazaridis Chair in International Entrepreneurship and Innovation, said.
The study is featured in a report called โCoping with COVID: Insights from Canadian Tech Firms,โ which was co-authored by Coviello and Laurier professors Sarah Wilner and Anne Domurath, along with Maria Rouziou, assistant professor of marketing at HEC Montreal.
โWe carried on asking questions that were performance-related and business-related in terms of practice and strategies โฆ but we also added in a bunch of COVID questions. So report three is focusing on the perceived impact of COVID in the organization on the people to performance in terms of Ontario high-tech firms,โ Coviello said.
The research team looked at responses from top management teams in these organizations, as well as the employees, and focused on three core areas: sales, product and marketing development.
โThey all perceived some impact in the sense that there were things that were harder to get used to and there were different ways of coping with COVID. But interestingly, overall, it looks like at least for the tech sector โ and I really want to stress this as specific to young technology firms โ performance is actually relatively stable,โ Coviello said.
โAnd what I mean by that, is that between the periods of December last year and June-July this year, so thatโs covering the whole window of time where COVID was just becoming an issue and then really, really an issue, productivity was up and performance in terms of sales revenue was lower than expected but not a lot lower. It was pretty much stable relative to December of last year.โ
โKeep in mind that tech firms are all about growth, growth, growth. So expectations for growth are usually fairly high, and they had high expectations. Nothing drastic. And customer retention, which is really important especially when thereโs a crisis in play, was holding stable. From a market and financial performance perspective, these tech firms were doing not great, not poorly, just kind of holding their own at this point and time,โ she said.
Given the economic repercussions caused by the global pandemic so far, the results of this study were a โpleasant surprise,โ according to Coviello.
โHaving said that, people are people. There were people that were struggling more than others in terms of what they thought COVID meant for them and the things that they were having to get used to,โ Coviello said.
โRanging from a lack of social contact to [an] inability to meet with customers face to face, some are very personal, some are more business-related, to employees feeling a sense of isolation, managers feeling that they were having difficulty working with their teams in terms of โhow do you motivate employees to work when you donโt see them?โ those kinds of things.โ
โIt looks like 75 per cent of companies reached in the July window of time were saying โweโre going to take a hybrid approachโ where it sounds like theyโre going to be listening to employee preferences, and preferences can be different from personal circumstances โฆ but companies are taking account of their employees,โ she said.
Companies like Shopify and Opentech made strategic decisions about going remote back in the spring, but Coviello is unsure if working from home will become a new normal for businesses in the future as a result of the pandemic.
โI think there are companies who will say โthis is actually working, suiting our employees, weโre still productive and letโs make this happen.โ On the other hand, I still think we have to wait and see what time tells us,โ Coviello said.
*With files from Aaron Waitson.
anticipated reads, Budget, COVID-19, Cystic Fibrosis, gaming, jakewatts, Lazaridis school of business and economics, lindsaypurchase, social distancing, students, Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University
The Tie That Binds WLU Since 1926
Serving the Waterloo campus, The Cord seeks to provide students with relevant, up to date stories. Weโre always interested in having more volunteer writers, photographers and graphic designers.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.