Everyone of us has been impacted by the COVID19 pandemic and we’ve all had to adapt and change how we do things personally and professionally. COVID19 has had a devastating impact on the world but it has also taught us a great deal about how we live and work. Personally, we’ve been reflecting on how many of the restrictions that have been imposed on our day to day life have actually brought about positive change to the work we do, the way we do it, as well as the clients we are working with at One Consulting.
Most of our time over the past few months has been spent helping other organisations think about how their services will need to adapt and change in light of the current COVID19 situation. We’ve been looking at how technology is best used, their ability to deliver acceptable levels of customer facing services, changes that are needed to internal processes and how organisations are managing risk / business continuity. In the short term, these changes are helping those organisations maintain essential services for customers, but we’ve no doubt that in the long-term many of the changes that have been introduced will transform thinking about how best to work and engage their customers in the post-COVID world.
One of the most dramatic impact for us personally has been the reduction in the time spent ‘on the road’. We are currently working with a housing provider in the North of England and in ‘normal’ times, this would have meant several trips up and down the motorways, overnight stays away from home, the slightly pathetic ‘table for one please’ in the local restaurant and packed days full of consultation meetings to make the best use of our time on site. Now, as is the case with most other businesses, we have accelerated and broadened our use of technology and now happily conduct interviews using video meetings, work on content on shared platforms and use online collaboration tools to run large workshops.
It took some getting used to the new way of working and like a lot of people we really do miss the ‘real-life’ face to face contact, however, there are many benefits. We spend less time on the long drives to and from client sites making my time more efficient and it helps us with a better work / life balance. From our client’s point of view, the overhead costs are reduced and we can be more responsive and agile as we have more available time to fit in meetings around other commitments. So, while we do look forward to returning to some form of normality in the future, we also hope that we maintain many of the positives that a more digitally agile workplace has given us and our One Consulting clients.