By Melkamu Abebe
THE COVID-19 pandemic has given us a great opportunity to reset our mindsets, our personal lives, our organisations, and even the world.
Every aspect of life has undergone change over the last two years. It has been up to us – individually and collectively – to be deliberate about making that change work positively for our future.
That future is now. We are already changing back to a more normal world but one in which we will continue to do things differently so that we thrive – again, as individuals, organisations, and the world.
From the business context we need to focus on our people even more as we prepare for the next phase – going back to our workplaces. The reality is that many people will continue to work at home. Even more realistic will be the demands by businesses for people to return physically to their places of work.
Uganda stood out from the rest of the world by keeping children out of physical school for the longest spell of the pandemic – but even that has ended and now we are taking children into schools.
All the ingredients for this to work with safety have been put in place – we know the SOPs, we have been vaccinated and understand the benefits, and we know the risks of not giving our children education effectively.
Translating that to businesses in the same way means that we must open up our offices, shops and factories to physical presence.
The time is now, so that we can restore the economy to the right levels sooner rather than later.
As we do so we must prepare ourselves in many ways. Changing office settings for social distancing and safety is the simplest part of this, even if in some places it might appear difficult.
The more complicated yet most important element is changing our mindsets.
It is time to adjust our thinking across the board – regardless of what level of employee we are at.
The key elements I believe we should focus on are:
1. Be present: Working at home was challenging for many people, and made it difficult for them to actually be present during those online meetings. The distractions were numerous – schoolgoing children in the background, pets, the need to cook meals or attend to other domestic duties, or even the availability of Netflix and more. Not everybody finds it easy to work without supervision, and in some places productivity suffered. Moving back to the office will require all employees to drop all distractions and be present. To focus for the full duration of their physical meetings. There will be no more opportunity to hide video or mute your audio. This is also a good opportunity to speak up at every opportunity and make your impact felt in the room.
2. Focus and deliver: Changing from home to office is not just about movement of bodies. The economy took a hit, and so did many businesses. The changes we undertake now will require everybody to focus on delivering set targets to revive productivity, profitability and recovery. All employees must focus fully on their work (again – there will be fewer distractions) so that business grows and develops, which will in turn benefit the employees. A number of businesses bent over backwards to keep their employees in jobs even while productivity was low. Now is the time to give back by working to your full potential.
3. Move quickly into the ‘new, new normal’: There is no time to be lost. All employees and employers must hit the ground running. As soon as we resume physical work we must be ready, adapt and go. After two years of living in the new normal, we should have prepared ourselves enough for the ‘new new normal’. With the right amount of foresight we should all be clear about how we will be expected to live and work in this new dispensation. It is not post-COVID but it is a new COVID phase. We should be mindful of the risks of the disease but do the right things while physically at work.
4. Adopt newer habits: in line with the ‘new, new normal’, we are all going to have to adopt newer habits as we drop the ones we picked up over the last two years. Clothing combinations of a dress shirt with sweat pants worked well on Zoom and Teams, but think how they will be received in the board rooms and at your work reception? Will we be taking more or fewer comfort breaks? How much coffee were you making during online meetings, when you would walk away from the screen on mute and with video off? We are going to have to change a lot that we have become comfortable with – but for the good of our employment and businesses.
5. Take responsibility and be accountable: Most of all, this is time for everybody to take responsibility for their work. Gone will be the days when you cannot report to a meeting because of network failure. We have seen too many meetings gloss over a report because someone can’t be heard clearly. Statements like, “Say it again?” or “Sorry, I was on mute.” will be no more. Going back to the office physically means you have to do the work and be accountable.
We have a great opportunity to do this properly from a health and safety point of view and from a business and economic growth perspective.
We knew this time would come, so we should be prepared; and as a great person once said: Success is when Opportunity meets Preparation.
Melkamu Abebe is General Manager at Coca-Cola Beverages Africa – Uganda
