Rookie in a Hamster Wheel
Walk to Work #2
The first few rounds of this blog will be a lot of firsts as I begin to pick up speed in my “hamster wheel” and adjust to working life. Last week was the first of the firsts and this week I will continue that with another first: my first post-work networking event.
The team get a lot of emails about different events and webinars and I have now been added to the mailing lists. A few weeks ago, Richard (Roberts, Inquiry Lead) sent me an invite to a gathering by a group called The Crowd. They run specialised panels and roundtable discussions aimed at high-level board members. These meetings are meant to be an opportunity for people in influential positions to get together to discuss future trends and brainstorm ideas.
The Crowd has a rigorous application process to filter out the riff-raff, so I was caught off guard when I got an email back. My bubble was quickly popped though as I found out they wanted me to attend as a note-taker to take minutes of the conversations. On further reflection this was highly unsurprising considering my answer for “How many are you in charge of?” was “None — unless you count the plants”.
The event was about Wellbeing in Sustainable Cities and the roundtable discussion I was inserted into explored the future of wellbeing in the workplace. The majority of the attendees came from the construction and infrastructure sector, so in the plenary introductions I was concerned that I would be out of my depth.
It took me a good half an hour to adapt to the jargon — as sustainability types do love a quirky acronym (or ten) — but soon I was fully captured by such things as PPDs (percentage of people dissatisfied; usually in relation to thermal comfort) and VOCs (volatile organic compounds; bits of things that vaporise at room temperature and can cause health problems).
I found the discussion fascinating, even though I had no expertise in the field. The participants made it clear that wellbeing is intrinsically subjective, and that what works for one person will most probably not work for another. They elaborated that the most successful projects were the ones where clients were able to curate their own environments. And that is something I can relate to.
For me, building a sustainable environment is about creating a balance between the ambitious societal changes that need to happen and understanding individual, achievable changes a person can make.
It’s unattainable to assume everyone will stop using fossil fuels and become vegan tomorrow, but maybe one person will buy an electric car and another will switch to using Quorn in their Bolognese. Over time, these small changes become normalised and more changes can be made at a pace where the individual feels comfortable making long-term commitments that they stick to. Like a successful office construction project, a sustainable lifestyle is one that is personalised to the individual.
Maybe it’s because I’m a rookie, but I did find the discussion fascinating and look forward to being exposed to other areas in the extremely broad sustainability sphere. I am excited to see what other connections I can make between our work and other professions and industries.
As a concluding note, I attach here a picture of my desk. Surrounded by the lovely plants Yinka (Awoyinka, Office Manager) selected, which I will dutifully water as I am now happily in charge of them.
