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[gentle music] When the coronavirus pandemic first started, remote work became the go-to solution for companies.

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At first, it seemed a terrific way to circumvent the crisis and continue production while we waited for vaccines, and the results are difficult to dispute 'cause despite a few outliers, countries with larger shares of their populations working from home generally fared better economically throughout the pandemic.

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But in Brazil, the remote work solution was never easy.

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The country has an extremely informal economy, and tens of millions simply had to keep leaving their home to work, even during the strictest coronavirus restrictions.

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According to official statistics, in the fourth quarter of 2020, 86% of Brazilian jobs had to be carried out in person, and that corresponds to roughly 72 million people forced to leave their homes to work, even during the height of the coronavirus crisis.

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It's no wonder, then, that distancing measures in Brazil were largely unable to stymie the spread of COVID-19.

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For those that were able to work remotely, however, it largely came as a blessing, and discovering that people can be just as productive at home, sometimes even more productive than before, it could make remote work a permanent fixture in many Brazilian companies, especially as the country struggles to fully vaccinate its population.

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This week, we discuss the future of labor in Brazil. My name's Euan Marshall, filling in for The Brazilian Report editor-in-chief Gustavo Ribeiro, and this is Explaining Brazil.

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[upbeat music] So here at The Brazilian Report, we haven't been in our São Paulo office since March the 12th, 2020, right after the pandemic was declared.

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Of course, for the last 15 months, work has continued, with our entire team keeping in close contact through WhatsApp and video conferences, but, you know, it has been very different, and even our podcast has suffered, as we've been recording our episodes remotely from our respective homes, as is the case today.

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But how has the move to remote work been received throughout Brazil?

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To discuss this, we spoke to João Paulo Cunha, market research manager at research company Instituto Locomotiva, which has carried out a series of studies on the working-from-home trend around the country.

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So João Paulo, to kick off, before March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was officially declared by the World Health Organization, less than half of Brazilian companies utilized remote work in some shape or form.

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What does that rate look like now? Less than half of the companies we studied used remote work before the pandemic, but this is a perspective we have of large companies.

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When we factor in the small- and medium-sized ones, which make up the vast majority of companies in Brazil, this percentage was much, much smaller.

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What we have seen since is a significant increase in remote work for large companies.

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During our period of study, 64% of Brazil's big companies had already put the majority of their employees on remote work, and what we saw from there was companies' remote work programs becoming more mature, as less than half of them had adapted to this format of work beforehand.

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So that initial period was one of discovery, as they'd never worked remotely.

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But it's worth noting that a huge percentage of Brazilian workers, particularly those from medium and small companies, were given no major assistance, especially when we look at the small firms which do not have human resources departments.

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For many low-paying jobs, a large part of these workers were unable to work from home.

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So I'd summarize the situation by saying there are two completely distinct realities in Brazil, the large companies which were able to adapt to remote work and the small companies and low-paid employees who had to face the pandemic in a much more improvised fashion.

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So Brazil's reality can be split up into these two very different realities.

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And for the companies which did send people to work at home, what are the challenges that this type of labor relations poses, and were the companies prepared for these challenges? We

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saw some clear differences in the challenges that remote work posed to large Brazilian companies.

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This became clear when we asked human resources professionals to evaluate the performance of their companies over a variety of different areas related to remote work.

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On one hand, some areas were evaluated very positively, especially those concerning the agility and speed in making decisions, especially because this was a demand brought upon by the circumstances.

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63% of the professionals believed that, that, in terms of speed in decision-making, their companies did very well with regards to moving to remote work.

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Similarly, transparency in communication was very well evaluated, with 57% of these human resources professionals rating their companies highly.

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Internal communication tools were also well-regarded, with 55% evaluating them positively. All of this is connected to the speed that is necessary during a situation like a pandemic, which no one had forecast.

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But on the other hand, some aspects were very poorly rated, particularly with regard to psychological assistance given to employees, with only 27% of these professionals saying their company reacted in an adequate manner, and it's worth remembering that this is a process that was traumatic for all sides.

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And the psychological assistance offered fell short according to these professionals. Also lacking was the support given to leaders of different areas of the company for them to exert remote management.

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It appears that tools were given for remote communication, but sufficient training and support weren't. That's how I'd sum up these challenges faced during the pandemic.

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Now, we at the Brazilian Report, we've been working f- at home for some time now, uh, as have most of my friends and acquaintances, and I've seen a bit of a mixed reaction from my own social circles with regard to remote work.

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From a personal standpoint, I mean, there was a part of me that was relieved to be working from home because gives me time to manage my time better.

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Um, also I have the chance to take care of things around the house, like, you know, washing the dishes, hanging clothes out to dry.

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But there's another part of me that misses being in the office and the camaraderie and teamwork that you can only really get in an in-person environment.

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So throughout your research, what patterns did you find among Brazilians working from home? Well, what we found was a very uncertain situation.

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In our conversations with people, we found two different scenarios.

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When we look at our work routines, we see that the workers who were able to work from home generally mentioned positive aspects about their routines while on remote work, principally because they could spend more time with their families and had more flexibility with their hours and to deal with daily tasks.

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But at the same time, while people mentioned this increased satisfaction among their routines, they also mentioned their perhaps contradictory dissatisfaction with the volume of work they had to deal with.

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So we can look at this in different ways.

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There may well have been an increase in workload for some workers, but this could also be a difficulty in managing one's own time, even when they see positives about being at home.

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So from the employee's point of view, we noticed an ambiguous feeling toward remote work, with advantages related to being at home, but significant suffering with the way they were able to manage their time and effectively manage their workload regarding deadlines and fulfilling duties.

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And what about productivity? Again, you know, this seems to depend on the individual and depends on exactly what job they're doing, but are people generally feeling more productive working at home or less productive?

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Well, the data shows a complete divide with regard to this aspect, confirming this hypothesis that the impact on productivity depends on the way each person reacts to remote work.

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When we asked about the general impact, 34% of HR professionals noted an improvement, 31% said they noticed no difference, and 35% noticed a reduction in the motivation of employees, so that's a complete split.

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And this shows us that there wasn't any trend in a single direction.

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There is further data to illustrate this better, which is the aforementioned perception that companies were unable to give sufficient training to their employees with regard to employee management and time management in a remote work model.

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They were much more focused on providing tools for remote work, like video conferences and the like, as opposed to training abilities necessary to carry out this type of work.

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In other words, this ended up being left up to each individual worker and their ability to manage their own time.

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And this indicates this large divide we saw in the data with regard to impact of the pandemic on motivation and productivity.

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And when we bring this around to the bottom line, looking at companies themselves, have we seen any notable changes in expenses or revenue by sending more people to work from home?

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This varies depending on the sector in question.

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What we saw during this period was a negative impact on those companies who depend on physical stores, like clothes retailers or companies related to entertainment as well as bars and restaurants.

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But on the other hand, there was an increase in revenue for companies that were already more exposed to e-commerce, especially online marketplaces.

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So as it was with the performance of employees, the financial impacts of companies varied, depending heavily on their exposure to e-commerce. Those who were more structured in this regard fared much better.

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Now, not only has remote work introduced changing perspectives over how we approach our time, but it may also usher in sweeping behavioral changes in the way we do business. That's after the break.

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The Brazilian Report was launched in October 2017 to cover Brazil for foreign audiences But thanks to the support of our subscribers, we have grown a lot since then, and we have expanded our coverage to Latin America.

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Now, every Wednesday, premium subscribers receive a newsletter with all of the most important political, financial, and cultural news in the region.

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You can try it out with our free trial, and our full subscription costs less than $20 a month. Just go to brazilian.report.

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So we continue our discussion with João Paulo Cunha, market research manager at research company Instituto Locomotiva.

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João Paulo, something I heard often at the start of the pandemic was people realizing that the long meetings they typically had in the office could be completely replaced by a simple Zoom call or email.

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Is that something that you picked up in your analysis? Are these digital processes set to replace a large part of the in-person work interactions?

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Without a doubt, the pandemic cleared a series of obstacles related to what people are willing to do using the Internet.

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In terms of the working environment, online meetings are the prime symbol of this, but throughout Brazil, we saw the same trend occurring for a series of other situations.

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For example, we saw a huge increase in the percentage of people willing to try digital solutions for a range of other matters, from telemedicine to online purchases for items and services these individuals were not accustomed to buying on the Internet, such as clothes or groceries.

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And after asking these people who tried these digital services whether they would be willing to continue using them in the post-pandemic scenario, the majority said they do intend to keep a part of the digital habits they acquired during the pandemic.

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Without a doubt, a large part of these new experiences and services are here to stay. But

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beyond the use of video conferences, what other digital transformations are we set to see in business?

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Because I saw that in your survey, there's a lot of discussion about how technology could alter the process of hiring employees. I was wondering if you could tell us a bit about that. Right, exactly.

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In our studies, we went in-depth on the issue of hiring personnel, and this is one of the aspects in which companies are being challenged.

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What we see is that in large companies, HR professionals have the perception that hiring processes are too bureaucratic and overly dependent on the physical presence of both parties.

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As an example, 35% of managers say they have lost candidates for vacancies due to red tape and delays in the hiring process. And these are significant losses.

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The company has already selected their candidate with the right profile for the job and then lost them due to excessive bureaucracy. Over one-third of companies experienced that.

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Furthermore, the majority of large companies in Brazil told us that they require the physical presence of potential hires in order to deliver documents. The candidates have to hand in their own documents in person.

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63% said this was the case in their hiring processes, and 31% say they required more than one in-person visiting for the hiring, not allowing this stage to take place online.

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Meanwhile, the vast majority of employees we surveyed believed that their companies need to adopt new hiring processes.

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86% of people declared this, and 95% believed that in the future, the entire hiring process would be carried out online.

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So this is a clear example that the pandemic brought some clarity to HR professionals, giving them the sensation that hiring processes need to be changed urgently.

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But this also applied to other types of actions being carried out by companies, such as digital meetings, which we mentioned before, increased investment in digital media, particularly for small companies.

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So this perception of the need to digitize companies is spread across a range of different actions.

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Now, cybersecurity is a pressing issue in Brazil right now, and we've recently seen a series of large-scale hacks of government servers, and experts say that this could be down to the increase of remote work because home computers typically are far less secure than corporate networks.

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So I'm curious to know whether this was a concern that was raised in any of your analyses.

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We covered this aspect of security under the umbrella of hiring processes, for example, in how companies can certify that candidates are who they say they are and ensuring that all signatures are valid.

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What we found is that a large part of HR managers say that tools of digital identification, such as biometrics and digital signatures, are extremely important in the modernization process of their companies.

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However, a large part of these HR employees do not yet use these tools.

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We asked them to what extent they see their companies as antiquated or modern, and only 21% say they see their companies as modern with regards to internal processes, such as using innovative methods.

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The majority said their companies use methods widely adopted in the market, while 18% believe their companies are in fact using obsolete systems.

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The situation right now is we have a small minority of companies that see themselves as innovators, which are on the vanguard of implementing these solutions.

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While you have eight out of 10 companies that are unable to be on the vanguard.

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But what the pandemic has done is shown employees the importance of these new digital solutions, especially digital signatures and facial recognition tools.

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There isn't a lack of perception that these solutions are important. It's a difficulty in implementing them and helping companies treat them as priorities.

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The pandemic could be an opportunity for digital solutions to move up the priority list for these big companies.

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And changing tack a little bit here, I'd like to talk about sanitisation during the pandemic and then post-COVID Brazil. Now, Brazil has always been very concerned about hygiene.

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I mean, as an example, if you work in an office and you don't keep a toothbrush at your desk, you're looked upon as some sort of savage.

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But of course, the sanitisation challenges amid the pandemic are very different from just personal hygiene.

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So I'm interested to know what findings you came up with in terms of the importance of sanitising workplaces and how these practices might continue after the pandemic.

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We carried out another study focused on the topic of cleaning and disinfection in Brazil. And you're right, Brazilians' perception has completely changed in regard to this issue.

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While Brazilians have always been concerned with cleaning, what we saw was a discovery of the difference between cleaning and disinfection.

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Before, the general perception was that places should appear clean and organized, along with the importance of personal hygiene.

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But this was always linked to appearance, as opposed to a complete understanding of germs, viruses, or microorganisms. This has changed drastically.

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We've seen a growth in the percentage of Brazilians who understand the importance not only of cleaning and personal upkeep, but that these new habits of disinfection must continue.

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When we ask these questions, the vast majority of people say not only that they will continue sanitizing surfaces and environments after the pandemic, but they also express that this will be a very important factor in their relationship with their companies,

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that this will bring them an important sense of security in their workplace.

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And there are many measures involved in this process, the distribution of masks to employees, for instance, hand sanitizers, because it's worth noting that a lot of employees, especially those with lower incomes, are not able to keep buying masks and hand sanitizers, and they see these as things that should be supplied by companies as items of basic safety in their workplace.

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And we saw other demands regarding new ways to organize canteens within companies, which are generally small spaces where people often had to eat very close to one another, and issues related to the disinfection of the workplace in companies which provide transportation for their workers.

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Essentially, there are demands related to the organization of these spaces which traditionally have always been cramped.

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So without a doubt, the pandemic has opened a wide range of new expectations and demands on behalf of the workers who previously may not have been aware of their importance in their private lives or ever thought of bringing them into their place of work.

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João Paulo Cunha, Market Research Manager at Instituto Locomotiva. Thanks for joining us.

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If you like Explaining Brazil, please rate us on your podcast app with five stars. It only takes a second to do and it will help more people find out about this show.

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Or you can sign up to the Brazilian Report, which is the journalistic engine behind this podcast.

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We offer a seven-day free trial, no strings attached, which gives you access to the site for a week without the need to insert any credit card details whatsoever. I'm Ewan Marshall. Thanks for listening.