Whatever damage the US inflicts on the rest of the world the good news is it’s shaking us all out of our complacency.
Because we’ve become complacent. Perhaps for some there’s been a loss of optimism. Finding out we’ve breached our 1.5 degree warming limit will do that. Or it’s exhaustion afte the mad euphoria of getting out of Covid and our version of the Roaring 20s that followed the end of the First World War.
Whatever the reason we think there’s too many people around the place who in spirit at least have adopted the habits of the “lying flat” movement, perfected by disillusioned youth in China, utterly sick of relentless competition.
But now we have war. That’s when everyone gets their mojo back and suddenly finds the energy to fight.
There’s someone pulling all the environmental protections of the richest country on Earth, crushing sustainability and climate action and taking social justice back to the prehistoric days.
This won’t be taken lying flat. One or other of the millions who will suffer as a consequence will find ways to combat this attack on our humanity and this thrilling planet of ours.
Mary Casey a principal of Introba who hails from the US says her sister in Dallas Texas has responded to the madness by inviting neighbours to a barbecue. Even though they are on the other side of the political fence. Another neighbour set up a lemonade stand so they could do their own version of hands across the waters.
Driving them was the sudden previously dormant notion: “let’s build a sense of community.”
It’s something we learned in Covid, Mary says. Along with supporting the shops in the local high street, asking how business is, stepping out more often for a movie and meal.
“The whole thing starts a virtuous circle,” she says.
One thing we know is that in times of strife, social connections are our most powerful resilience. We know our neighbours, their habits, their inclinations and so how to help them, or ask them for help.
Workplaces as hotbeds of budding social connections
Equiem, the company that Gabrielle McMillan has nurtured from its early days in 2011, has turned the art of that high street and neighbourly interaction into a software platform that can remove the barriers of actually having to speak to someone else when you need it most – when you’re feeling socially challenged.
Going to a website and discovering there’s a fun lunchtime class on, or a group of people planning a picnic on the weekend can be a huge relief for those who don’t fit into the extrovert category.
In the company’s early days at Rialto Tower in Melbourne where part owner Lorenz Grollo finally cracked the nut of how to make tenants “sticky”, business deals were done, romances bloomed through these semi engineered connections. There was even a marriage.
Gabrielle’s team has grown from a start up in 2011 to around 200 now. Business is booming.
And there’s a reason for that. Most of us are working harder, faster, longer and the speed has entered our DNA so that ADHD is now a social media virus.
- Check out the podcast we did with Gabrielle and come and hear her in person at our Blue Zones monthly leaders forum on 6 May.
Luring people back to work with luxe – and food!
On the prosaic front Adam Garnys of indoor air quality CETEC says you really can’t beat free food as a way to get people back to the office.
Google has done it forever, now the lawyers have come alive to its appeal and Garnys says the humble water cooler has come a long way. These days it’s marble clad.
“And you see people congregating around the kitchen spaces, especially when there’s free food on offer.” Which, increasingly, there is!
Garnys is an obvious choice to let us peek into the machinations of the world’s biggest companies and how they’re strategising tactics to lure their staff back to the motherlode – in the office.
His work as an indoor environmental consultant means he visits a lot of workplaces and can get a sense of what rocks their boat – and what doesn’t.
What’s clear is that there is a big investment in fitouts.
One legal firm in Sydney has taken an entire floor and turned it into an event space.
“It’s epic – like top end New York. It’s a place to hold seminar and other events and get people back in.”
In short, this team of legal eagles is going premium. But they are not alone.
The multiple levels of open plan offices are still there and the leasing is still strong, he says, but the space is being used differently – for meetings and functions.
But it’s quality over quantity.
In Sydney, Macquarie Group’s new digs are among the best he’s seen “absolutely amazing – a beautiful place to work.”
Atlassian Tower at Central is now well and truly out of the ground and will be another ground breaking workplace. It will vie with Quay Quarter for top pick.
Thing is, tenants have to compete much harder with home offices. So if people are going to come back to the office, the spaces better be good.
Garny’s company has offices in the US and UK and among its portfolio has been verification work for Microsoft in Silicon Valley in the US and for Google in its new Bay View campus in San Francisco.
For these companies, “Workplace is absolutely key,” he says. “They don’t make people work in the office but it’s so good [it’s hard to resist] and they’ve always had the free food.”
These are fun places, he says.
In Sydney Google has “secret” room in its offices; to gain access you need to know which book to pull off a wall. And of course there are slides and hammocks and other play things.
So the big question is with these kinds of distractions at the office is this really the place you can get your best work done?
Indoor Air Quality is important
Companies such as Google are also keen to get the very best IEQ for their staff and it has its own protocol with testing done yearly.
There’s also not much concern for cutting corners. While newcomer healthy building rating tool Fitwel competed on price, these days, it’s upped its game and the two are more closely matched on price.
“The market doesn’t really want cheap and quick,” Garnys says.
“The market was robust and wants something it can plug into its GRESB rating.”
Another thing he’s sure of is that concerns for health are “not going away.
“If anything there’s even more interest than in the past”.