Getting Over it Being Over, Not Over
It’s been a rather hectic few months here at Looking Up Feeling Good in between getting a complete site rebuild, multiple interstate travel commitments and assisting an assortment of clients trying to deal with one rather interesting challenge – what to do when we’re supposed to be done and dusted with a pandemic, yet we still can’t get employees we need, we’re struggling to keep employees healthy, connected and back in the space we once called ‘the office’?
For many workplaces and Senior Managers, whilst declarations of ‘it’s all over’ are coming from the Political level, the reality for businesses and other organisations is they’re over it being Over but NOT Over. In fact there’s some significant pushback.
One core challenge is the now emerging fight between the CFO and Director of HR. CFOs in city locations and larger suburban office environments have finally twigged to the sheer and arguably unnecessary expense that is Commercial leasing. And they have allies in the workplace – employees who know the sheer and completely unnecessary expense that is ‘traveling to work’.
It seems the only ones out of the loop are CEOs and HR Directors who are more comfortable seeing human activity, regardless of whether or not that human activity is being productive. What this ‘Over Not Over event has shown is that work from home works, Workers can be trusted, often prefer it and more importantly are as, and if not MORE effective than they are in the open plan, noise ridden citadels that are modern workplace designs. Maybe HR Directors ought to get themselves of the delightful book ‘Quiet’ by Susan Cain. In fact the mayors of the three major cities in Australia might want to grab a coy too for, despite call, incentives and pleas for workers to come back, they’re NOT coming back!
Well not in the way they once did. Rather it’s time for the Commercial Property Managers to take stock and by that I mean changing their portfolios from Offices to other uses. The two big uses will be decent size apartments for regular people (not shoeboxes for students), and indoor farming. About three years ago I did a presentation for the Property Council at a Victorian conference – they can’t say they weren’t warned, regardless of the trigger.
So the pandemic is NOT OVER. But I’m well over being told it’s over by politicians running on wish lists
Stay safe people
A quick note for the history buffs among us – in this month of August fifty years ago, the first components of the Berlin Wall were constructed with rings of barbed wire severing Berlin into visually distinct west and east Berlin. Russia’s main challenge at that time was the 10,000 or so East Germans each…
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