This is the time to reach out to your industry contacts and truly get a sense of what changes are coming. Be proactive and expand your network, so you can get a variety of perspectives. Many people have been furloughed or laid off. If you haven’t been, you may feel grateful and secure. After all, in today’s world, not being laid off means you have a job because your current employer needs your skills. However, that doesn’t offer you any guarantees for the future, and you should have an understanding of what’s to come.
All economies that have fallen into a recession have bounced back. Some have taken longer than others. There are mixed opinions regarding the current economy. Many think it may take a while for a full recovery, but there seems to be a shared opinion that an immediate bounce-back of some sort is likely.
But what I've witnessed in the last two downturns is that economies don’t bounce back into the shape they were in prior to the setback.
Over the last 45 days or so, I’ve had conversations with healthcare IT leaders who are beginning to evaluate what their teams and staff will look like as they prepare for their industry’s future needs.
Here’s a topic that comes up frequently: Not all projects that came to a halt will be priorities once things stabilize. The reason is that any project that was underway was approved as a priority under a much different time and set of circumstances.
As COVID-19 came about, priorities changed. Dealing with the coronavirus required a new way to address old issues. Some things have stayed the same, but many others have changed, and as an industry, we are not going back to the old ways. In many cases, even the consideration of going back is not part of the conversation. In fact, many of the changes that have been made have had great success and have served to demonstrate that we’re only at the beginning stages of new solutions.
My advice: Be sure to talk to people you know in order to understand where the marketplace is headed, and how your knowledge and skills can bring value to that market. This will give you a head start in terms of knowing what skills and knowledge you’ll have to learn to truly excel in our new normal.
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