Covid - A positive break from traditional work?

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever in the world you are, you might notice this week that my voice is a little different. That's because I'm struggling a bit with a sore throat and a little bit under the weather. Luckily, it's coincided with a two week break from the tour which I'm spending it with the family in Connecticut, which is very beautiful and extremely hot, like many parts of the world. I will have some fantastic family time over the next two weeks. Anyway, today, I wanted to talk to you about the positive outcomes that I can see from COVID. And whilst I'm in no way diminishing the problems that COVID has caused, and, you know, the heartbreak and all the terrible things that happened to people affected by COVID. Like everything in life, there are some, I believe some great positives to come out of it. The first thing is, I think the world has been stuck in a traditional way of working for a long time, probably a century or so, where people go into the office, work long hours and commute home. Also a lot of flying around the world happened in order to do business, that some of it possibly and a lot more could definitely be avoided. Overall, I think the traditional model, whilst there were some companies already trying to break this, in the main, it was just business as usual. COVID has changed that! COVID has forced companies to trust their employees to get on with the job at home and of course, the realisation comes that people can be effective under a different model. And I think that people have realised that effective work is far more important than just putting in the hours and if you work effectively, that frees up time to spend with family. I think COVID gave a lot of people the time to reflect and actually see firsthand, from working from home, how things could be different and how they could spend more time with their family. And also, for those working incredibly long hours, actually see for themselves what they've been missing out on and find ways to be more effective, to still get the work done and have family time, which I think is a huge positive.I think that new models are going to emerge that we haven't really thought of yet, but because the tradition is broken, people's imagination and creativity will kick into place. Clearly, there's definitely a need for human interaction. And if you're going to build teams and have great teamwork, it's impossible to do that without human interaction. So therefore, whatever happens needs to be a mixture of in office, and, and your meetings and get togethers, as well as working from home or remotely. And I think this is going to be a huge challenge for companies to build an environment and culture that they want with less human contact in terms of person to person or in groups. And that challenge is to find that happy medium of where you can still talk together because nothing can replace the personal touch the personal nuances that happen when you meet and how relationships are built through. mixing together that cannot happen in the same way over things like zoom. But overall, I think that the change in working practices is a huge positive for the world, and that the new models that emerge will be Be extremely exciting. Speak to you again next week Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices