Defining The Way We Work
Photo by Chris Curry
Lexicographers of the world must surely have had one of their busiest years ever, the overwhelming wave of events we have all had to surf has brought a tsunami of new phrases and terms into our collective vocabularies around work and the way we work: furlough, zoom-bombing, quaranteams, remote working, distributed working and, a particular favourite of mine, loungewear-working.
All these new descriptions of how we work reflect the incredibly fast, explosive short-term change that Covid ignited, alongside the longer-term structural changes being made around corporate and SME office space which could fundamentally change the way we work from now on. The longer we spend in this new working landscape, the more embedded and structural those changes will become.
Around Winchester, previously hard-core London commuters are recognising the time and quality of life benefits that come from losing the 3-hour daily train grind, avoiding the stress of ‘will there/won’t there be a seat’, no more squashed tube rides and having more time for family and self.
Perhaps the pendulum will swing back when this ‘is all over’ … but probably not all the way.
A more balanced hybrid working approach must surely become our future and having larger professional working populations staying local can only help to build resilience and the economies of commuter towns; what may be London’s loss could be our local town gain.
So much of what is happening in the wider world of work nudges up against our smaller world of flexible working and creating a local professional working community of curious minds. Like so many others, we are having to think differently all the time about what role we have to play in this new landscape and creating new ways of expressing what we can do and how we can help.
In many ways it feels like the rest of the world has accelerated to catch up with us and our members here at Workshop (although to be fair we don’t have a loungewear-working plan). For years there have been many who understood that you don’t have to be physically present to be mentally productive and that when trust and transparency are at the heart of how you work then very quickly colleagues and clients don’t care where you are based as long as you deliver.
However, we are all recognising the need for new environments and diversity of contacts to innovate, create, stimulate our imaginations and design, and whether you are an employee, SME, freelancer or consultant, everyone needs innovation and creativity more than ever. We are seeing more people exploring flexible working but with a different mindset. It’s no longer ‘I need a desk’, it’s now about craving a different human connection after months of the same four walls and the same daily company!
There is more diversity of experience and capability in our shared space than I ever experienced in the huge marketing department of my corporate life – fintech, artists, software developers, PRs…. the reason we are better at what we do is the influx of ideas and stimulation that come from this diverse working environment.
So, we wait to see what the next few months might hold for us all
The stoical self-employed will dig deep, as they have always had to. But it will be interesting to see how corporates tackle their new distributed workforces. Aside from making sure everyone has safe and reliable working conditions at home perhaps they also need to challenge themselves to consider how they can support those who need more stimulation, a more energising and different environment to innovate and help their business’ succeed in this war of attrition we find ourselves in.
In the meantime, I think those lexicographers will continue to be busy, someone at least should tell them to check out the The Cambridge Online Dictionary which defines remote working as:
“a situation in which an employee works mainly from home and communicates with the company by email and telephone” - email and telephone only! How quaint and so 2019.