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O P I N I O N
The future of work
Those companies that are resolute, agile, and creative will define the workplace rules of tomorrow, while the rest will be forced to follow or buckle beneath the pressure.
I look back on the initial months of the pandemic with a chuckle; we were clueless, weren’t we? I recall the many discussions indicating that if we all just shut down for two weeks, the virus would burn itself out and we could all return to business as usual. Then, one by one, we watched as the cities where we live and work enacted stay at home orders, and we saw two weeks stretch to two months, then six months, then a year – and so on. Somewhere in the summer months of 2020, the reality and depth of the crisis finally began to sink in, and for the first time in my nearly 25-year career, I found myself taking on a new role: futurist.
Kevin Brown
Like our peers, Ardurra peered into an uncertain future – one with macro- and micro-economic unknowns, concerns for the health and safety of our families, friends, and colleagues, and a business landscape that was unrecognizable. We simply did not knowwhat the impact would be on the business or our lives. But out of that uncertainty, we found resilience. We discovered that we were far more capable and adaptable to remote work than previously thought – and we recognized, in real time, that the technology, tools, and skill sets that were emerging out of necessity would accelerate trends that previously seemed far off. The future was nigh. THE TALENT GAP. The scarcity of talent in the AEC industry is nothing new; even during the Great
Recession, unemployment among engineers never rose above 3 percent. Fortunately, our fears of economic calamity assuaged as the pandemic proceeded, and any hiring freezes were short-lived. By summer 2020, we were hiring, onboarding, and integrating staff wholly remotely. What’s more, as an acquisitive firm, we acquired multiple new businesses during this period and integrated all of them remotely. Certainly, we would have preferred to welcome them in person, but we managed and we were successful. The pandemic had an unintended consequence on our recruiting; we discovered that we could take on talent wherever they were, not just where we
See KEVIN BROWN, page 10
THE ZWEIG LETTER JANUARY 10, 2022, ISSUE 1423
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