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
You’d think that given a focus on the future, you’d ask specialists in the future to have some input, and whilst that didn’t occur for the PM’s Summit in Canberra over the weekend, some of Australia’s Futurists had already done the leg work to contribute their thoughts on the future of Australia. That report is…
Read More >Some of Australia’s leading futurists gathered in Melbourne in March to provide a specialist Futures approach to addressing the Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra. The outcome of that Summit and the development that subsequently followed has led to the creation of the report ‘Australia 2020 Futurists Summit’ that has worked through each of the ten…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will meet with eminent ABC radio presenter Jon Faine on Wednesday the 16th of April to discuss the outcomes of the Australia 2020 Futurists Summit and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra on the weekend With a focus on the future of Australia it would be only natural…
Read More >A group of leading Australian Futurists gathered over the weekend to consider the 10 core themes set to be tackled at Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra in April. Convened by Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber, the 2020 Australia Futurists Summit utilised some of the advanced facilitation and strategy development techniques as a…
Read More >As preparations continue for the Prime Minister Rudd’s ‘1000 heads’ ideas summit in Canberra in April, a group of Australia’s leading futurists are gathering in Melbourne this weekend for the ‘Australia 2020 Futurists Summit’. The futurists attending the summit work across Australia, in corporate, not for profit and Government agencies in a variety of fields…
Read More >A few thoughts on what steps could be taken to overcome the ‘treat everyone like a nail’ approach that Interest Rate rises seems to do. Check out the idea under the ‘Latest Focus’ section Interest Rate Rises are going to penalise too many people who don’t deserve to lose their homes
Read More >Marcus Barber offers his thoughts on How to Stop Japanese Whaling in its Tracks and suggests that raiding boats won’t do the job. Instead he suggests that the key to negotiating with the Japanese is to have the Japanese people do the work. And to encourage them to do so we must begin to talk…
Read More >If an ‘Inconvenient Truth’ raised the profile of global warming to the general population, it appears that a willingness by political leaders to take appropriate action to mitigate the possible ramifications is still very much lacking. It is such a pity. No one who holds the Global Warming scenario close to heart wants to be…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will join Tim Cox on 774 ABC as part of the conversation hour next week Tim is filling in for Jon Faine whilst he takes a well deserved break and Marcus will join him for the conversation hour kicking off at 11am on Thursday the 13th of December, where they’ll discuss…
Read More >At the AustForesight 2007 Conference, Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber and fellow Futurist Steve Tighe presented their take on what is required to enable futurists to be seen as more relevant to the Corporate world. Drawing on their shared experience as facilitator and client, they detailed the journey of foresight and futures across the past 50…
Read More >