6 min read
Published on March 25, 2021
Brendan Ittelson is the Chief Ecosystem Officer leading Zoom’s developer ecosystem. Brendan joined Zoom in 2015 and led Zoom’s global customer support before taking the CTO role in 2020. Prior to Zoom, Brendan worked as both a contractor and a Department of Defense civilian employee in the federal sector, creating, implementing, and supporting various global identity management systems. After leaving the DoD, Brendan transitioned to the financial sector and joined a FinTech startup, Dynamics Inc, where he served as VP of Special Operations. In that role, he combined his business and technology background on special projects, including helping to revolutionize payments without disrupting the way payment systems work. Brendan holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Oregon and a certificate in Identity Management from the Naval Postgraduate School.
As both a global health crisis and a resulting economic recession, the COVID-19 pandemic forced us all to find new ways to function in order to keep the public safe. Many turned to collaboration technology for continuity — video communications were suddenly our lifeline to society, enabling us to continue work and school in a digital environment. Any baby steps toward digital transformation suddenly had to become leaps and bounds, with people reimagining their entire day-to-day practically overnight.
To evaluate the economic impact of remote work and video communications solutions during the pandemic, Zoom commissioned the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to conduct a survey and economic analysis, focusing on what industries were able to pivot their business processes using video conferencing, resulting in business continuity and even growth during a time of significant economic turmoil. The resulting report, prepared by Zoom based on the survey data and findings made by BCG, spans key industries and six countries around the globe, specifically looking at five U.S. states as well.
A few top takeaways from the report:
Let’s take a look at some of the other findings.
As countries around the world grappled with lockdowns, people rapidly adopted remote work and video conferencing solutions. Through the swift and effective implementation of remote work, businesses within these countries were able to save both money and jobs that may have been lost as a result of the pandemic. In the U.S., for example, the ability to work remotely helped save 2.28 million jobs.
GDP and Jobs Saved by the Ability to Work Remotely
To look at how video communication solutions affect the way people work, both now and in the future, the survey aspect of the report asked respondents to estimate what share of employees in their company used video conferencing solutions in 2019, 2020, and expected to in 2022. Results were grouped by enterprise and small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMB). As we can see, companies expect video conferencing usage to stay significantly elevated post-pandemic compared to 2019.
Video Conferencing Usage for Surveyed SMBs (as % of employees)
Video Conferencing Usage for Surveyed Enterprises (as % of employees)
For this report, Zoom commissioned BCG to look at five specific U.S. states to examine the role of remote work and video conferencing in supporting small-to-medium-sized businesses during this time. The findings show us that video conferencing helped enable business continuity, introduce new ways of working, and even helped improve employee morale at the SMBs surveyed.
Here are a few of the insights:
No industry was immune from the economic impact of the pandemic, but some were able to make dramatic shifts in behavior to adjust. For this survey, BCG took a look at how the healthcare, education, technology, and professional services sectors embraced remote collaboration to enable continuity during the pandemic and how the trends may continue in the future.
Here are a few of the insights:
The COVID-19 pandemic made remote work a necessity, but the trend is here to stay. Some workers will go back into the office after the pandemic, but most others will still collaborate virtually as remote or hybrid employees.
In fact, the Boston Consulting Group research findings reveal that remote work will remain prevalent in almost all the countries surveyed.
COVID-19’s impact has been profound. The world is different and the workforce is everywhere. The report’s findings tell us that people will continue to work together to overcome any obstacles ahead and technology will only continue to play a pivotal role in defining what’s next.
To discover how you can empower an agile, hybrid workforce, check out our Building Forward resources.
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