After lessons of COVID-19, what will the new workplace normal look like?

Governments have printed unprecedented amounts of cash to subsidize wage-earners grounded by the novel coronavirus pandemic.

However, as lockdown measures are run down and such funding is withdrawn, some people will find they do not have jobs to go back to.

The crisis has delivered a jolt to many aspects of life, not least to the already changing world of work.

Even before COVID-19 struck, policymakers were pondering the long-term future of the labor market in an era of globalization, hi-tech, robotization and the growth of the so-called gig economy.

But will those debates prompt a radical reshaping of incomes and the workplace as the world emerges from the crisis or, as governments scramble to rebuild their battered economies, will it be back to business as usual?

One potential innovation that has been under consideration in some countries since well before the pandemic is the introduction of a Universal Basic Income, or UBI.

UBI is the concept whereby governments pay every citizen a basic living wage without any conditions attached. It has been tried in countries as far apart as Kenya, Iran and Finland, which trialed a scheme that paid a random selection of adults 560 euros ($632) a month with no strings attached.

A Finnish follow-up survey found recipients were more satisfied with their lives, experienced less mental strain and depression, and were more stimulated to learn and study.

Advocates of UBI claim it is a straightforward way of tackling poverty in a changing work environment and actually spurs economic growth, not least by funding people while they train for more highly skilled jobs.

Critics say UBI would simply be an incentive for low-paid employees to give up work and stay at home, thus depriving the state of taxes on their incomes.

The idea of a guaranteed free salary for life has been seen as one way of coping with the potential impact on jobs of increasingly tech-driven and robotized economies.

Interest has now been revived by the experience of coping with a pandemic which, temporarily at least, forced millions out of the workplace.

A recent poll in the United Kingdom indicated a slender majority of the public favored the introduction of a state-funded income for all. That generated enough interest for the UK government to rule it out, having already spent billions to fund salaries and businesses through the pandemic lockdown.

The prospects for UBI and other labor and salary reforms are likely to figure at a summit of the International Labour Organization or ILO, an agency of the United Nations, due to be held in video conferences at the start of July.

The virus struck just a few months after the UN General Assembly backed an ILO declaration that called for strengthening people's capacity to benefit from the changing world of work, and to better protect their rights.

This year's session will now, inevitably, focus on how to maintain those goals as lessons are learned from the COVID-19 crisis. An ILO pre-summit paper described the pandemic as having devastated the world of work, causing massive human suffering and exposing the extreme vulnerability of millions of workers and enterprises.

Young people, many already in a situation of considerable difficulty in labor markets before COVID-19, had seen their prospects deteriorate sharply, according to the ILO.

It acknowledged that current emergency measures could not, and were not intended to, last forever. But withdrawing them too early could lead to a second wave of hardship.

The forthcoming summit of government, employer and worker representatives will consider how the post-pandemic world will have to adapt to a "new normal" in the sphere of work.

"The danger in this is that we lose sight of the idea that, whatever the limitations faced today, the future of work can and must be what we want it to be," the ILO cautioned. "Rather, recovery plans need, from the outset to lay the foundations for the 'better normal' that is sought."

Emily Hee, a tech expert who works on the integration of emerging technologies in the workplace, said the pandemic had already altered the previously negative atttitude of companies toward the work-from-home model.

While greater levels of remote working, at least for office workers, were likely to outlast the pandemic, she acknowledged there was a need to cope with the downsides of working from home in terms of isolation and a sense of being permanently on call.

That was where hi-tech could help, she wrote. "We know that artificial intelligence, properly applied can take low-level but time-intensive tasks off workers' plates."

But less than 20 percent of current jobs can be done remotely. Most people still have to travel daily to factories and fields, construction sites and hospitals.

Two billion people globally are dependent on the informal economy and these are the ones most at threat in the absence of a post-pandemic reform of the world of work.