As many countries gradually recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, some companies have asked their employees to return to the office whereas others remain in work from home mode. There’s no question that the coronavirus has had a huge impact on the global economy, and a physical and emotional impact on people around the world as we maintain physical distancing and try to maintain our health and well-being. The consequence has been that many businesses throughout the world have closed down or been severely disrupted, which has inevitably affected employees. Many companies responded by announcing work from home policies together with the used of advanced technologies. COVID-19 has therefore become a catalyst for disruption in the operations of many companies.

Two words that we are hearing more often – and which many companies are paying increasing attention to – are ‘Reskill’ and ‘Upskill.’ It’s important that employees remain vigilant about developing their existing skills in addition to learning new ones. To properly incorporate the qualities of reskilling and upskilling, we must first adjust our mindsets to adapt and improve ourselves, this means having a ‘growth mindset’ or being open to improving our abilities and learning new skills. This begins with learning technologies that help facilitate our current operational procedures while also looking out for what interests us so we can improve ourselves. The ability to reskill and upskill means that we increase our value, and in turn, contribute more positively to the company.

Although we may have adjusted to a certain comfort level with work from home or physical distancing, striving for increased knowledge and enhancing our skills can empower us to step out of our comfort zone. Improving our knowledge and skills is as simple as a few clicks. For example, Coursera, a worldwide online learning platform, features over 100 courses from the world’s leading universities including the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins University, and Imperial College London. For further information, visit: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/coronavirus-coursera-free-certificate/

COVID-19 is going to impact how we work, nevertheless, it’s best if we learn how to turn adversity into opportunity. We should make the best use of our time at the moment to set new goals and improve ourselves so that we are ready to overcome any challenges in the workplace. If we open ourselves up to innovative learning experiences, we can use this crisis as an opportunity to discover new interests that in turn, build new experiences and contribute to our progress, and increase our value. It’s important we never stop learning.