Page 28 - BusinessWest August 4, 2021
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 Office
Continued from page 24
“Every time you have a space that was occupied by three people, that had three work environments, they might cut that back to two to create a bigger gap between people,” he explained. “So now you have a work environment that’s going to be for sale or is going
to become surplus; that’s one of the things we’re seeing.
“And I think that when it gets sorted out as to who’s going back and who’s not, and how often they’re going back,” he went on, “I think a lot of personal space is going to disappear. If you work at home, you’re going to have your own workspace; when you go to the office, you may or may not have your own workspace. It may be a space that’s occupied by someone else on the days you’re not there.”
Bottom Line
Proshan, who does a good bit of sailing when he’s not working, made a number of comparisons between what’s happening in his industry and what transpires on the water.
Specifically, he talked about wind. “You can’t see wind,” he told Busi-
Hybrid
Continued from page 27
At the same time, Big Y has prepared a series of best practices for employees working remotely, including the need to take regular breaks. “Productivity is important getting the job done,” Galat said, “but we also want to make sure people are taking some time away as well.”
Giombetti said remote work has allowed some bad habits to creep back in, including a tendency to multi-task to the detriment of the main task.
“If you’re in the office, in the con- ference room, having a meeting, most of us know it would be foolish to pick up the phone when someone is talk- ing to us because that’s just rude,” he explained, noting that it happens much more often during a Slack, Teams, or Zoom meeting. “Unfortunately, the
last year and a half maybe caused us to retrench a little bit, and the amount of multi-tasking has increased. We have to guard against that.”
Unexpected Absence
Verville remembers the week in March 2020 when O’Connell’s Holyoke headquarters emptied for what most employees thought would be a tempo- rary detour home.
“People did what they needed to do. There was a real commitment there,” she said. “But I personally didn’t think it would last this long. I think most people left the office and said, ‘see you
nessWest. “What people experi-
ence as wind is what they see as the result of wind and its impact on objects. When you see wind blowing through the trees, you don’t see the wind, you see the result of the wind. When you’re on a boat and there’s no wind, if you look at the water and see it start to ripple, you know that wind
is approaching you, and it can either knock you over or make you go faster, or help you determine which direction to go in.
“It’s almost as if we’re sailing,” he said of the current conditions in his business, “and not able to see the wind in the trees.”
That was Proshan’s way of saying that an industry that has been blown about for the past 18 months, and not in a good way, is still very much in the dark about what will happen next.
The mission, he said, is to be as pre- pared as possible, even with all those unknowns.
“If you don’t pay attention to the possibilities,” he said in conclusion, “you’re going to be too late.” u
George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]
in a couple weeks.’ No one thought
it would be this long. And I missed everyone, so it’s great to get back to some sense of normalcy, if you will.”
That new norm seems to be an understanding among employers that their workers value flexibility, but also that the workplace culture will suffer without some face-to-face collaboration.
“It’s a hard balance,” Giombetti said, “but I think organizations that are intentional about it do it best; that’s the recipe for success.”
It could also be a recipe to attract talent at a time when many companies are struggling with hiring and reten- tion, as many potential workers would be more amenable to a hybrid sched- ule than five days a week away from home.
“It’s about being able to attract and retain the top talent and finding that balance between supporting the stores — providing the tools to get their jobs done — and being accessible so that people say, ‘hey, I can work at home, and they care about me — I can take care of my family’s needs as well,’” Galat said. “It’s all about the workplace culture, and work-life balance is part of it. We want the best of both worlds.” u
Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]
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