Today’s newsletter’s theme is “working.” What will be our working style as we continue to settle into 2021?
Bob Snyder wrote an excellent column about Microsoft’s recent report detailing hybrid work — and the fact that many of us are not ready for what 2021 brings. I know that I can personally echo the sentiments about burnout and general exhaustion. I realized at the beginning of this year that I hadn’t taken a proper vacation in years. Why do workers feel like they have to do this? My new advice is just to take the vacation. Your work will be here when you get back.
Mark Coxon also writes about returning to work — but from the angle of offering different environments to your customers who may be looking to get back to working in a physical office.
Usually reports from big high companies are not scary, but then we’ve never before seen reports issued in the middle of a pandemic. Microsoft calls this year’s annual report “The Next Great Disruption Is Hybrid Work – Are We Ready?” And proceeds to answer their own question: No way. Microsoft’s report contends hybrid work is here to stay. Sure, the Seattle blue badges have a lot to gain by proving that. But their data only echoes other research. Most employees want it both ways: “I want to work from home when I want and I want come into an office when I want.” We all know that “I-wants” don’t get.
We’ve seen a lot of articles written about technology as it pertains to the return to the office. Many talk about touchless interfaces, personal devices, improved collaboration hardware, cross-platform soft codec systems, and home office setups. I think all of those things will definitely be important, and heck, I may have written a couple blogs or given a couple talks (or both) on those subjects myself. However, I think there are three other areas every integrator should be discussing with their customers as companies get back to doing at least part of their business together in physical spaces
Some projects have time to complete. Some projects are urgent. The tighter the timeline, the more monitoring required. Each AV integrator has tools for gathering this information. These include forms from purchasing, the warehouse and info from the suppliers. The delivery tracking numbers will come from FedEx, UPS and other delivery services. All these different sources of information have to be aggregated and tracked. I create a Microsoft Excel sheet for each job to track and update it as I go. I’ve gathered questions to consider as the equipment is on its way.
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