Agile working has been a part of most people’s lives since we adopted smartphone technology, and could take our emails everywhere. Having technology where we can record our thoughts either as audio or on a notes app, write emails with or without internet connection, to send as soon as we are in range, and the anchoring feeling of having a phone in your hand, means you are very much in a position to always be available.
As Anne Cantelo says, we are no longer working in the same sort of environment as we used to, and this isn’t necessarily a detrimental idea. Cantelo explored the idea of presence, and whether being present on the high street dictates a store’s reputation, arguing that nobody discredits Bezos’ Amazon Corporation due to not having a storefront to browse through, and instead only being accessible online.
The same is said for people; we are ever present and accessible via the internet, always connected to an extent. Who can say that they don’t wake up and check their notifcations, swiping away any miscellaneous details in order to prevent being buried. I can think of many scenarios where I have been woken at 2am with emails from people overseas. They could be working during a 9-5 but I’m not, not then, not when I receive it. And, although, being woken up by the notification sucks, the sender cannot be blamed. We are all reachable, within reason.
The same is now the case with work. Due to the nature of the Covid19 pandemic, most industries are still issuing working from home orders where possible, meaning copious amounts of big-city-offices are vacant, and collecting dust, as they have been for the last fifteen months.
Hamza Khan criticised the idea of presentisms at the desk when it comes to punctuality. In his TED Talk, he declares that he quit his last office job due to “the insinuation that [he] wasn’t producing because [he] wasn’t physically tethered to [his] desk”. Most arguments against remote working, and remote learning related to this, there was no guarantee, prior to the pandemic that people wouldn’t use a day of working from home as a paid vacation. And although that is something that could occur, such thoughts are significantly detrimental to those who benefit from working from home, whether that be new parents, parents with young children, employees with a two-hour-plus commute either way to the office, or members of the disabled community who struggle with the morning commute.
It was never fair to demonise working from home, and as Cantelo explained, her business was once at the top of the pecking order when it came to scouting new recruits due to her company being willing to accommodate for people requiring accommodations such as working from home.
As we said, we have now proven that we can be present without being somewhere in-person. This means opportunities for work can be broadened, with Government Schemes such as the Kickstarter Scheme from 2020, to help get young people back into employment after losing their jobs in the pandemic, allowing for people based all over the UK to apply for vacancies. You could be working with a team scattered across the UK, and the doors this opens for collaboration is just so exciting. We cannot wait to see what lies ahead as normality resumes, and post-pandemic-accommodations and innovations for working and recruitment fall into place.
Based in London, U.K., and founded in 2016 by Arvind Mishra The Agile Works (www.TheAgileWorks.com), is an up-and-coming recruitment and Agile consulting company. Arvind is a Certified SAFe SPC and regularly delivers both private and public SAFe certification workshops.
He is a design thinking expert, Sr. enterprise, portfolio Agile Coach with over a decade of experience working as an Agile coach in diverse industries such as banking, pharma, retail, auto, oil, gas, consulting and government.
The Agile Works; a small team of three strive to help shape the leadership's mind-set and values in readiness for their business transformation journey challenges. With Arvind at the helm, we strive to provide you with the agility tools to make your company that can thrive, and not just survive.
To book a consultation, or for any enquiries, you can contact Arvind via the following email address: arvind@theagileworks.com