Thanks to the pandemic, we have all accepted a lot of “short-term” changes. . .for more than 18 months. One of those major shifts in how we work, and where we work. This no-longer-short-term change looks like one we’re going to keep, including a major shift in the relationship between workers and employers. The…
Today’s employers are facing some of the most extraordinary challenges they have seen in decades. Even before the pandemic, the pressures on corporate leaders were more novel and more complex than ever before. Add to that more than 18 months of Covid-19, the related worker-driven movement that is The Great Resignation and a vital…
In February 2020, retailer The Body Shop implemented a new hiring practice. Going forward, they would hire entry-level seasonal employees on what was basically a first come, first serve basis. That might sound more like a customer-based strategy rather than a hiring one. But the company now practices what they refer to as “open hiring”.…
It’s now been more than eighteen months since the pandemic began. But few people, if anyone, are saying it’s been such and such many months since the pandemic ended. People talk about things re-opening, or use the phrase ‘post-pandemic’ – but it’s not really back to life before the pandemic. Yet it’s also no longer the…
I recently took my first business trip since the pandemic began. It was just a short overnight trip, from London to Düsseldorf and back. But the logistics, combined with the emotions, of the trip were as complicated as they were revelatory. I realise now that one of the biggest misnomers of this moment is the…
COVID-19 has impacted almost everyone on the planet; that is as incredible as it is irrefutable. Few shared experiences are so truly universal in nature. But it’s also true that how the pandemic affected us varies tremendously. On a national level, the decisions of state actors and individual citizens have had hugely different results in both how…
When the Pain Isn’t Worth the Gain: Putting Well-Being First There was nothing normal about the 2020 Olympics. First of all, it wasn’t in 2020 — postponed, like so much of life last year, due to the coronavirus. Ultimately, we saw a version that reflected much of the pandemic-based transformation we’ve seen elsewhere – far…
Are People Really Going Back to Work? Sort of – Understanding the Future of Remote Work. As the world has begun to open up, thanks to rising vaccinations and falling Covid rates – in most places – one thing seems clear. We’re not going back to normal, or back to 2019, or “back” to anything…
For most of us, when we recount a stressful situation, we emphasise the things that created an emotional response. We’ll not just talk through the substantive areas of a negative work assessment; we’ll mention how it was in the middle of the day, wrecking our focus for the rest of the afternoon. We don’t just…
A lot of 2020 was marked with uncertainty, from the mundane (will stores ever stock paper towels again?) to the momentous (when will there be a vaccine?). However, there were many vulnerabilities in our society that we knew already, that have played out in bright relief during COVID-19. The pandemic highlighted the disparate availability of…