Post COVID 19- Not much will change

There have been many articles and sentiments expressed about business and work life post Coronavirus crisis. I would like to touch upon two points being debated. 

1) WFH will become the new norm. I beg to differ. At least in India it will not. Some reasons. For one WFH is a senior management luxury with people living in 3-4 BR homes and study areas. For the ordinary staff, sales force, customer service, call centres, lower management home means at best a 2BR space with parents and family to share the space. For the junior staff, the new recruits, first jobber it is worse. Rented shared rooms. For them an AC office with your own workstation is a luxury, an escape from the cacophony and drudgery at home. And I am not even getting into irregular power supply,  tech support, bandwidth issues etc with people spread all over towns and issues. Some have spoken about how rentals can be saved etc. But my guess is that investment into technology which is spread out and it’s maintenance will be a serious cost centre if WFH has to be the norm.

2) Deglobalisation. According to reports many US and Japanese companies are planning on pulling out of China and going home. Indeed Japan has set aside $ 2.5 billion for Japanese countries to come home from China. But the fundamental thing is that everyone is in business. And profits will continue to be the prime motive for any business. China has everything going in terms of systems, infrastructure, government backing. They will act quickly and offer better financial incentives, subsidies, tax relatives. Ultimately only a trickle will happen out of China. There will be no exodus.