A New Way To Make The Workplace Work: Challenge The Status Quo
Yesterday, the United Nations launched a global call for creatives to convey critical public health messages about COVID19 in ways that resonate with different cultures. As much as I liked the initiative, there was a particular part of its message that kept echoing in my mind: Together we will flatten the curve.
Flatten the curve? How ironic!!
Ironic because exponential growth, the Holy Grail for any company in this greedy economic world, has become its worst nightmare. Today, on-trend is #FlattenTheCurve. That applies both to the spread of the virus, and preventing the current economic model from collapsing.
All these thoughts come to my mind, as I am trying to make the most of my new understanding of quality time: working without distractions for a substantial period of time. In my case, this would be every morning, Monday to Saturday, from 5.30 am to 9 am, from 1 to 3 pm and at night. In other words, when my kid is sleeping.
This monumental challenge to the status quo that nature has slapped onto the lifestyle of many, and is sought after by way more, is one of the biggest walk-the-talk-lessons our society has ever been given.
If you are wondering, the lesson to be learned collectively is this: we are all on the same boat. Which, in economic terms, can be translated to: we all live in a global economy.
First lesson-to-be-learned: We are all on the same boat
Yes, we live in a global economy and, consequently, your actions, or your inactions, will have an impact on my life. But also it will have on yours too, as we are all connected. That’s what COVID19 is all about.
I hope that from this lesson-to-be-learned, we all become more empathetic and considerate towards others, and towards our Earth. I hope our actions and our thoughts are instilled with a profound feeling of #ViralKindness, to quote one of the hashtags suggested by the United Nation in its attempt to encourage a global alliance dedicated to stopping the spread of COVID19. But also, I hope we will be able to refactor the current economic model based on a vision of a world of infinite resources able to feed our greedy society.
We just have one Earth, and it is not ours to do with as we please. Let’s hope that out of this we all learn to be more humble and grateful, less greedy and more giving.
The second lesson-to-be-learned is to go back to basics.
Rather than coming up with complex solutions, what is key is to ask ourselves what is the most basic yet effective course of action we could all take to sort out this chaotic disruptive situation right here, right now.
To fight COVID19, social isolation and washing your hands thoroughly are the best “weapons” to win this war. The challenge here is to figure out what would be the most basic yet effective measures we could all adopt to flatten the global economic drop right here, right now as we speak.
Finally, the third lesson to-be-learned is that there’s more to than just work.
Consequently, all this blah-blah-blah about work-life balance that has gone on for decades is nonsense. Just look around! The answer is closer to home than ever — if you are, as I am, in shelter-in-place with kids and/or elderly people.
Yet, the reason why I claim all this talk of work-life balance is because you can’t compare work to life, as though they separate entities, because work is part of life. A huge part, for many of us, but it is still only a part.
I hope that as a result of this crisis, companies realize that the workplace needs to be more empathetic and by that I mean they start looking at the employee experience not as a business process that happens only within working hours, but as it is: a component of their employee’s life. In doing so, there will be more inclusion, diversity, employee engagement and productivity at the workplace, which are the goals of any human resources department. If you want to learn more about that, I’ll leave you here with a 15-minute video of a presentation I did last September in Helsinki at the Joint Futures conference on how to design an Empathetic Workplace.
