OPINION
Bring your own culture: SELF-RELIANCE AT WORK
For those who return to it, the post-pandemic workplace will prompt a whole lot of ‘bring your own [thing]’. We trust our own stuff more than the bacteria-ridden belongings of others’, so what might we now decide to bring with us? Neil Usher considers the options
M ore grizzled workplace types (BYOD) to work. This was a reaction to the company-issue 3/86 buckling under the weight of Lotus 123, coupled with the realisation that many of us had better kit and applications at home than we did at work. A simple bit of access trickery and we could get our work emails and files on our own laptops and tablets (thereby opening a legal minefield for a world that wasn’t ready and in which ‘cloud’ signified a harbour for water vapour seeking condensation nuclei). In recent years, the rise of the experience economy has extended to our workplace, where we’ve been sharing many of the resources that were once allocated to us (from incidentals to desks to storage to amenities), floating freely through generic spaces, unencumbered by the responsibility of ownership. Ironically, this happened just at the point that the IT kit issued by organisations routinely outstripped the specification and (those over 40) may remember the push for ‘bring your own device’
performance of our kit at home, rendering BYOD unnecessary. However, for those who return to it, the post-pandemic workplace, will prompt a whole range of ‘bring your own [thing]’ driven by emotions on a scale from caution to outright anxiety. We (less than rationally) trust our own stuff more than that of others, even if we haven’t sanitised it as well as others may have. If it’s had our grubby hands on it, as least they’re our grubby hands, we reason. What might we now bring to the office that’s ours? Bring your own transport The bacteria commonly found on a tube or overground train seat would likely cause excitement at Porton Down. Yet we have our hands all over them on a daily basis. Before we’ve been anywhere near soap and a basin, we tear up a croissant. So, from here on in, we’ll sacrifice our safety for health, riding bikes and electric scooters and trading the risks of overcrowded public transport for the dangers of the roads.
With almost 30 years in industry as a property, workplace and change leader, Neil Usher has delivered innovative environments for organisations in a variety of sectors, all over the world including Warner Bros., Honeywell, Rio Tinto and Sky.
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