The most global phenomenon in human history has generated a generational category, the pandemials. This category should be expanded to take advantage of the opportunities ahead of us.

By Martin Padulla for staffingamericalatina

The pandemic, among other changes in our daily lives, brought new words. We all heard and said sometime during this time, constructions such as “flatten the curve”, “false positive”, “saturation”, “second or third wave”, among others.

Semiotics distinguishes between denotation and connotation and the messages they convey. The word pandemial has been created to denote the new generation marked by the coronavirus, arbitrarily taken as a reference to those people born from 2016 to date. Pandemials or quarantenials are said to be marked by social isolation and the disruptive social, economic and cultural changes brought about by this unprecedented historical period.
Many questions arise around this concept. First, who are the pandemials, is it an age category, and what should be the true connotation of this concept?

The global change in terms of human coexistence is transversal to all age segments, with different consequences, by the way. Some manifest themselves in the short term and others will have substantial impacts in the long term. As far as the world of education, training and work is concerned, the reality is no different, we are experiencing immediate consequences and we have enormous challenges for the future.

This period in history has shown that the predominant narrative in the world of work speaks to a minority. It has become outdated and in its outdatedness has lost its efficiency to explain that world to us. Perhaps it has become an unavoidable reference when it comes to explaining part of the reasons why most of the labor markets in our region are rigid, old, not very dynamic and non-inclusive.
We are all pandemials if we think of this category in a transversal way. If we think that profound changes come from great crises, the pandemial category should be a category that denotes great transformation and that even transcends individuals and involves institutions.
Will we be able to co-design a pandemic education, a training of competencies based on the demands of the organizations of the present and the future? Will pandemic work be composed of diverse formats that can coexist and shape pandemic careers? What will pandemic talent look like? Will organizations consolidate a pandemic cultural change?

Next week we will have a Pandemic World Employment Conference, with the challenge of achieving fluidity between face-to-face and virtuality, with a focus on Spain and Latin America and axes linked to digitalization, uncertainty, diverse forms of work, disruptive technologies such as blockchain, platforms or artificial intelligence and their impacts on the world of work. A transformed World Employment Conference that constitutes in itself a true transformational event, a pandemic conference.

Staffingamericalatina is part of the WEC family and proud media partner of the event. Following the line of the column, a coherent closing would be to emphasize that a true pandemial investment is to register now and participate in the whole event. For those who can’t, my real pandemial recommendation is to follow the most important through the curated posts of staffingamericalatina and implement in the last quarter of the year purposeful transformations in their circles of influence.