How the Zoom revolution and new work from home policies can give everyone a more equal opportunity when it comes to education and employment

How do you define genius? Conceptual innovators? People who score at or above the 98th percentile on an IQ test? A creative talent unlike no other? Perhaps some combination of all of the above? 

While there are lots of ideas around the exact definition of genius, most people seem to agree: you can find it anywhere. As the New York writer Fran Lebowitz puts it in Martin Scorcese’s current hit Netflix show Pretend It’s A City, talent is one of the only attributes that are randomly and yet evenly distributed. Geniuses come from all walks of life. 

Genius or talent might be innate, but it can be recognized and nurtured. This is where equal access to school and workplace opportunities come in. For all the destruction it has caused, the pandemic has led to one big changing dynamic that holds huge potential for human equity. Over the past year, we’ve undergone an unprecedented global experiment with remote teaching and working. Schools have been forced to move learning programmes online, while workplaces have harnessed new technologies to streamline communications and facilitate meetings. 

The acceleration of this tech has been coupled with a huge shift in attitude – we now understand (better than ever before) that we don’t necessarily need to be together in a room to make something great happen or to progress as a society. But the next frontier is to ask ourselves: how we can embrace these changes to transform access even further, opening up opportunities across geographical, gender, class, ability / disability, racial and other lines? 

It’s important to acknowledge here that not everyone can study and work remotely. Many do not own or cannot afford the technologies that make remote schooling possible. Plus people like frontline healthcare workers, retail workers, or factory workers cannot do their jobs from home. Studies have indicated a racial bias, finding that Black and Hispanic people in the US are statistically less likely than Asian and white workers to be able to work remotely. Schools and employers must consider what that bias should mean in terms of educational support, financial support and also these individual’s safety. At the same time, we as a society can learn from the past year and consider how to make remote studying and working more equitable for everyone. 

Here are three areas where remote schooling and working could improve access.

ACCESS BEYOND BORDERS

The psychological shift we’ve made towards understanding remote schooling and working as “the new normal” is already creating a more globalized world. We can attend conferences online that would have cost hundreds of dollars to travel to, we can freelance for companies based overseas. Yet as it stands, many companies still only employ those within a certain geographic catchment area.

Writing for Fast Company, Paul Estes, author of Gig Mindset: Reclaim Your Time, Reinvent Your Career, and Ride the Next Wave of Disruption, explains the issue: “Many of the most successful and desirable employers are based in expensive cities on the coasts. Not everyone wants to move to those cities, nor can many people afford to. More and more, smart, dedicated people are choosing to stay close to their families. Some have sick or elderly relatives to care for. Others simply prefer the towns and cities where they grew up.” Through cultural biases and intensive interview processes that require a large amount of expensive back and forth travel, these people are often overlooked, he explains. 

Estes describes the moment he recognized this in his own company and decided to work with global freelancers as a way to diversify: “Adding in the perspectives of people from around the world teaches me how to be productive on a whole new level. These people often see situations differently and come up with unique solutions to problems.” Overall, he says: “Location bias is a critical and, as yet, poorly understood factor standing in the way of successful diversity policies. Companies that truly want to support diversity and inclusion must actively support remote work.”

ONLINE LEARNING POTENTIAL 

In the past, gifted programmes across America have been found to privilege white or affluent students, overlooking potential genius in the process. Experts believe that there are myriad ways in which online learning can support better access and foster young people’s talent. The most obvious is that a digital learning revolution could make education more affordable. 

Harvard Business School predicts that the pandemic could lead to a more “hybrid” model of college education, which combines face to face classes with standardized online learning. This could reduce the high cost of courses, and mean that students could save money by no longer having to devote four full years to residing on campus. But if we really want to transform online learning for the better, points out Harvard, we should be collecting data on what’s working and what isn’t.

Similarly, we can use the increased data points we have on home learning to improve the remote learning experience on an individual level and to uplift students that need extra care. From Udemy and Coursera to Lynda, Skillshare, and Udacity, the new wave of online learning platforms now being utilized have a huge amount of user data, notes Forbes, and this “enables those platforms to use machine learning algorithms that can enhance the learning patterns of people”. Learning content and approaches can therefore be, at least to some degree, personalized: “For example, when a student repeatedly struggles with a concept at the course, and the platform can adjust the e-learning content to provide more detailed information to help the student. The instantaneous feedback loops inside the platforms which are provided by other online students or the platform improve the learning curve. This also offers shy or more reticent people the opportunity to participate in class discussions more easily than face-to-face class sessions.”

ABILITY AND DISABILITY 

In a Tweet that went viral at the start of the pandemic, disability campaigner @jocyofthedragon wrote: “My school just went full online and I dropped out last month because I was told that I couldn’t go online part-time for my disability or care assistant reasons.” In another Tweet, disability activist @Imani_Barbarin wrote: “Imagine my surprise (all disabled people’s surprise) when because of the #coronavirus, all of the accommodations we have been denied because we’re disabled have suddenly become available.”

For a long time, society has had a discrimination problem when it comes to workers with disabilities, despite the fact that one in four Americans has some type of disability. Tweets like the above serve as an important reminder that while measures to improve physical access like ramps and elevators are important, creating tailored remote options for those who need them is vital to equal study and employment opportunities. Beyond this, there are other ways that increased flexibility in terms of studying and working from home can benefit people with disabilities, too. Home is a more controlled environment for some people living with disabilities; it may be easier to keep hygienic, which is important for those who are immunocompromised (something we now all have a better understanding of). For those living with chronic pain or fatigue, it may be easier to rest, or skipping the daily commute could be less tiring.

Charis Hill, co-founder of #HighRiskCovid19, a movement to highlight how those with disabilities are more at risk of the virus, summarizes: “It’s important for employers to remember that disabled people have been requesting accessible work-from-home policies for decades. Let’s use this as an opportunity to hire disabled people to create ongoing remote-work policies that extend beyond COVID-19. So many disabled people are unable to work because of employers creating barriers, not because our bodies keep us from working. We’re pros at working from home.”

A MORE EQUITABLE FUTURE 

These are just three ways that remote schooling and working could improve access to education and employment opportunities. (More flexibility around childcare, for example, is another good one). Yet these exciting opportunities depend on tech companies, schools, and employers adopting not just a “can do” but a “will do” attitude when it comes to equal access. Importantly, they also depend on affordable software and hardware options and improved WiFi access (think Google’s now defunct balloons, or SpaceX Starlink, to bring WiFi to remote areas). 

Diversity in schools and colleges means more diversity in the leadership of tomorrow, as Estes reminds us in his Fast Company article, this will not just benefit individuals, but also improve the economy. “A 2015 McKinsey report on 366 public companies, reported in the Harvard Business Review, found that those in the top quartile for ethnic and racial diversity in management were 35% more likely to have financial returns above their industry mean,” he writes.  

We’re currently undergoing a sea change with the ways in which we live and work, and if we choose to, we can seize this moment to create the diverse schools and workplaces of the future. We can allow more people a seat at the table. All over the world, experts, thought leaders and astounding talents are going undiscovered. But in the future, the situation might look very different: maybe we’ll no longer think of geniuses as rare, because we’ll have given more of them a chance to thrive.