Every global impacting event you can think of in the last 40 years has resulted in a change in societal thinking, behaviour and perception. This COVID-19 pandemic is another shift we are going through and the results will be long lasting. How does this impact family, business, and employment? For some, it already has impacted through the loss of loved ones, the short term illness of others, job losses. On a postive note, some fathers have spent more time being a parent then they ever had before. Some couples are beginning to have a marriage, for better or worse. Children are able to have more playtime with their parents and parents have no where to hide.
Yet, weighing up the pros and cons we are not comfortable with the restrictions, we crave human touch or more realistically we crave parts of our social life that's been put on hold, even though we have found some joys in 'Zoom meetings' it just doesnt cut it, but it is better then nothing at all.
People need jobs, they want their old job back, they want to have the job they signed a contract for but never got a start date.
In 3-4 months or sooner many businesses will start to reflect on how well they survived this period and if productivity was still high, how was innovation? Did ideas still come through? Were risks being managed and processes still being improved? If the answer is yes, then questions wil be asked concerning office space, "do we need so much office space?", "Can we adjust the working hours to reflect mass home working trends?", "Surely we can hire staff from Europe, Africa and other timezones that can work in UK patterns but from their home?"
Employees will ask the question, "why do i need to come into the office?", "Is there not a tool out there that can facilitate online collaborative workshops?", "Can we do these training sessions live online?".
If we want to embrace the modern office, then we have to embrace the modern technology and attract staff from across the UK, Europe and parts of Africa and no longer be limited by the technology hurdles, security, accessiblity, and even mobility. Organisations need to invest now in the tools, that can open doors for the best talent to be accessed, with location no longer being a stumbling block. (Options will be shared in later blogs)
Many jobs have been furloughed (1 million applications sent in to UK government), paused and even lost. When this social distancing is over, I would like to imagine it will be like the Californian Gold Rush in the mid 1800s, the demand for jobs will be sky high. There will be so many jobs on offer, businesses will have learned more about agility, flexibility and will have created new ways of working. If this thinking prevails then we will be smart and plan ahead, prepare the ground like a true farmer and when it rains, we will profit from our labours of seed planting - networking, engaging, learning and even blogging.
None of us really know what tomorrow holds, especially as there is enough challenges for today, but we do know we are living in a present that we never expected and as a result we are having to get comfortable in adapting to a changing world.
So if you can make home working or home life great, do it, make it work, get all the benefits, take everything this time can give you, live in the NOW.
As for me and my household, we will occupy this space, press towards our goals, build bridges and when this season is over, i'm praying that gold nuggets will be delivered to us.
Now that's postive thinking!
Eugene James
MD AGILITY X
Agility enthusiast / PMO Expert / Home worker
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