A new world of work

I remember during the late 90’s, as the internet revolution spread across the world and the power and accessibility of computers and ‘the world wide web’ doubled every year, people began to talk about a glorious tech future. The long awaited utopian vision where workers stayed at home with their families and video conferenced into meetings, where people could collaborate with each other across the world without the need to sit in endless traffic to get to the office finally seemed within reach.

Executives and employees out on the road got laptops, mobile phones, and powerful internet applications let them work and update HQ in real time. And that’s largely where it stopped until now!

The global COVID 19 pandemic means thousands of companies have suddenly needed to implement total operational change. But how do you retain productivity amidst the chaos?

The heart of a company

A couple or so years ago the DNA of Mitrefinch changed forever. Rather than a tightly siloed workforce we became an open community – a family even! We empowered our staff to take individual responsibility for their outputs, supported and guided within a trusting, transparent and equitable innovation culture. With this transformation, and the freedom it offered, came true ‘home and flexible working’ – and with that new and difficult collaborative and organisational challenges. Without these changes it is likely that we would be in a very different and likely worse situation and would have to hibernate the business until this economic winter had passed.

As part of our new vision we could see the seismic changes in technology, A.I, Automation, Robotics and global mega-hosting platforms like Azure and AWS were going to bring. These changes were the infrastructure necessary for the fourth industrial revolution and a new global work-life culture.

In response Mitrefinch became a decentralised learning organisation, continually evolving and changing ourselves in order to become the best version of ourselves. The COVID 19 pandemic has enabled us to put our thinking to the test.  It is this vision that lies at the heart of the radical product changes we are now developing. New ways to help your business continuously evolve and transform, measure best practice and achieve powerful efficiencies – however big or small you are.

And so I ask; in this new world where is the heart of a company? It is not in a building or a powerpoint mission statement – it is in the people, every one of us – our collective DNA. It’s who we are and how we are trusted and encouraged to work collaboratively and creatively together. It’s in the technology, tools and products that enables us to fit together’ and work as a community – wherever in the world we may be.

Keeping the lights on for us and our customers

During this lockdown and period of economic and social uncertainty we have taken another path. Simply put; because ‘we practice what we preach’, we have the resilience and governance to be able to keep our staff working productively. And it’s important that we do. Our customers rely on us to enable them to continue to operate. We are pushing on, supporting our customers any way we can and innovating all the time.  We’re using this ‘extra time’ to make our customer offering and products stronger and better and we’re not slowing down, we’re putting our foot down on the accelerator!

There are many companies who have shut down their enterprise or furloughed their workers for the common good. We recognise and thank them for the sacrifice they are making to keep all of us safe, and we want to assure those who are still operating or have been granted exemption status that we have implemented our business continuity plans and our business is running at full strength. Our flexible approach and amazingly passionate and customer centric workforce allows us to continue operating, supporting our existing customers and extending our support to those who need us the most right now.

After the storm has passed…

…months of industrial project deferment, pent-up consumer demand, delayed purchasing and operational decisions, large and small scale corporate strategic re-alignments, recruiting and training (for new staff and those who have been furloughed who may need refreshers) will suddenly be unleashed.

People will still want cars and to go on holiday, they will need new computers and phones and all the other products and services that make life possible.

And after this storm, a million companies will know the results of this vast ‘work from home’ and ‘operate differently’ experiment. They will have learnt to trust, nurture and support a distributed, decentralised or restructured workforce and they will be ready to apply those lessons. In some ways our products retain a fingerprint of your companies functional identity and they will enable you to evolve into the company you may now be required to come. It knows your people, their movements and behaviours, and you’re going to need that when you do return to complete operation.

There is a growing sense that we may never go back to exactly the way things were. That this transformation will be necessary for everyone. We hope that they will then become like us, part of our global family.  You will know what worked for you as a business and what did not, and you will need to find ways of applying, measuring and governing those transformations.

So, come and join us! We’re time travellers delivering productivity out of chaos, and new products for a new world.

Chris Flynn Product & Innovation Manager @ Mitrefinch

Get in touch today to learn more about our industry-leading Workforce Management solutions and see how they can help your business.