Companies are saying they want to use their space for IDEATION and VALUE CREATION

Those close to me will know, I’ve been screaming for ages about why we continually have traffic jams on the freeway when we can work, create and achieve from home.
A solution to the freeway problem is possible, as the pandemic has demonstrated very clearly. With employers forced into getting staff to work from home, we are now seeing the benefits (and a few negatives, but that’s how we learn).
As Scott Russell, President for the Asia Pacific and Japan of SAP, a German multinational software company, said in the Weekend Australian, the work environment is changing and will never be the same after COVID-19.
“The use of office space in the future will be less about day-to-day work. It will be for ideation and value creation. Companies are saying they want to use their spaces for that rather than a place of employment.” (15 August 2020)
I guess the part that upsets me the most is WHY we need something to come along and belt us behind the ear for us to choose common-sense solutions and make progress!
Surely we could have considered this ourselves BEFORE the arrival of COVID-19. But anyway…
So now employers are having to trust employees to work from home – OMG! Do you remember those cameras they used to have set on the top of your screen to check you were working? Now that’s trust with a capital T. Oh, sorry, are they still being used?
Now I appreciate company software can’t necessarily be taken off the server and distributed to all the employees’ little, home laptops around the country, but seriously. Software and the like will only improve as market demand increases. I’m sure it’s happening as we speak.
Employees still have to be come up with the goods, as they should. But there’s ample room for them to demonstrate they can do that. And, at a minimum, precious hours can be saved, surely. It’s really about giving people more rope so they can demonstrate they can perform and get the job done well at home, instead of at the office desk. Maybe if the rope was there before COVID-19 they would have been able to demonstrate the goods back then. And no doubt some will use that extra rope, kindly extended, in an incorrect manner. They will have to learn the hard way.
But in fairness to the whole argument – most staff are just pleased to actually have a job at the moment and some cash flow coming into the house (leaving aside Job Keeper and Jobseeker), and are perhaps a bit reluctant to rock the boat – at least in this environment. Nothing like nature’s stockwhip to keep people in line.
And I think we’re demonstrating pretty clearly that we don’t actually have to travel from one side of this big bloody country of ours to the other to attend a business meeting. One thing to say for COVID-19, it has forced the idiots on the tail of the mob to do their shoelaces up.
So, can we please use this experience to actually LEARN, and use this important little tool we have at our disposal – our brain! That’s what we’re meant to be doing aren’t we – getting smarter, not dumber? As our old mate Scott Russell from SAP says:
“The use of office space in the future will be less about day-to-day work. It will be for ideation and value creation.” Sounds like a good plan to me.
So, get off the bloody freeway (they went out in 2019), stay in your PJ’s and make sure you produce – as so many are now doing. (But maybe get another set of PJ’s – those are a bit ripe.)
In closing, it would be remiss of me not to mention that my second book, The Flying Bushman, will be released in a few days, on Wednesday 2 September. Hopefully, the readers of this blog and the readers of my book will realise the synergy between the two:
It’s about making a positive contribution to my community and delivering food for thought to my readers, which in turn gives them a voice.
And for those that are not aware the name of this blog “the Speakers Crack” originates from experience I had as a young man in 1976 of Speaker’s Corner in London located in Hyde Park. Where anybody, and I mean anybody, who feels strongly about a particular issue, can stand up on a stump and have their say. If people like it they listen – if they don’t they move on. This long-standing tradition has been going since the mid-1800s. Long may free speech continue?
The blog of www.theflyingbushman.com
“THE SPEAKERS CRACK”