We Are All in Nomadland Now
Working from home, or should that be living in your work? The global workplace has changed much through the past year. Suddenly everyone is working like a seafarer. You eat, sleep and breathe work, because there is no escape. What are the technological solutions to make work better?
WORK SLEEP EAT REPEAT
Picture the scene, the alarm beeps, you throw your duvet off, swing your legs out of your bed and rub the sleep from your eyes. Wandering to the sink, you blink — grabbing your toothpaste and brush. The day begins…but how different now to the past.
Whereas we may have dashed to the station, slugging down a latte macchiato, now it’s chucking on an old pair of pants, brush through the hair (singular…look at my profile pic). Then we are instantly sat at the desk, all ready to go. We are the Work from Home (WFH) gang, perhaps even nomad workers spread across the globe, and there are billions of us.
Sometimes it’s great, the days with a little freedom or wiggle room built in. Grabbing an extra few minutes here and there. Work and life in balance. Other times it’s tough. Teams, Google Meet or Zoom meetings on the hour, every hour for an hour.
So, what does the impact of working from home or living at work really mean? We hear that companies are debating what to do with their bricks and mortar. What do we do with the brains and the bodies more to the point? In a Human Resources sense, not Hannibal Lector obviously.
PROS AND CONS
As with anything in life there are pros and cons. There are undoubtedly good things about working from home; laughing at the annual rise on rail costs, pondering which route to grab an evening jog, or knowing the car can be dropped off at the garage for that overdue service.
A recent Forbes survey found 59 per cent of people feel just ‘fine and dandy’ about the concept of working from home. With men preferring it marginally over female colleagues. The good, was seen to be time with family, no commute, more flexibility, cheaper, more productive, and with the perception of less office politics.
Not everything is rosy from the garden, as in the same survey people were worried about more distractions, less social interaction, extended working hours, poor home office setup, harder to communicate, and an impact on productivity.
Digging deeper, it seems that small WFH victories do not win the war. They may feel good but the nice to haves of home working seem to pale when the big questions of loneliness, lack of engagement, extended hours and poor working environment are taken into account.
EMOTION OF THE OCEAN
There are very big questions when it comes to not only the place of work, but of work’s place in life. Is this a liberation from the tyranny of old working, or is it just a new way to get more for less? Are we truly at the dawn of a new age, or is this simply a moment in time that will be forgotten when the masks are finally removed?
As a former seafarer I cannot help but be drawn to the parallels between home working and a life at sea. The new WFH situation, that so many workers are experiencing for the first time, has major similarities with working onboard ship.
So, I welcome you to the ways of being a seafarer. This is what we have done for years; living in our office, sleeping next to our desks, a hop and a jump from our engine control room or wheelhouse. Work was all around us, all consuming, no balance, work on a ship is life, and that can be as tough as it sounds.
All too often seafarers are still disconnected, and rarely see the office, there is just a toing and froing of emails, demands and complaints. Slowly though we are seeing a positive change as technology takes on some of the heavy lifting for crews, making life at sea more manageable. What are the lessons for office staff ashore?
TECH IS THE ANSWER
Shipping has slowly but surely begun to embrace a technological revolution. While you may be reading all about autonomous ships, or remote pilots steering ships, the real changes are perhaps less dramatic, but no less effective. We are seeing that data is the answer, regardless of the question. Suddenly, the power of digitalisation and the flow of information and decision making has unleashed a new world of maritime informatics.
This is about people onboard a ship, still living and working in the same space — but doing so supported by technology. Life is still remote, missing friends and families, bickering over whether the cook should do more or less fries, but with the demands of the company ashore satisfied by new systems, processes and automation.
We have slowly seen a hybrid working solution on the best ships in the world. The others are still to catch up, and the worst may never do so. But for the really good companies who want to have world class businesses, they are rushing to embrace and develop the solutions that their seafarers, ships, clients and even society need.
The seafarer of tomorrow is all set to take advantage of technology like never before. By harnessing sensors, by generating data and by having systems that share and allow the use of all this intelligence. Life and the work that has to be done at sea can be made better.
HYBRID WORKING
So, what do the lessons from over the horizon mean to our work ashore today and in the future? Will the hybrid model win, will technology prove to be the answer? Working ashore is a breeze compared to being at sea, so there is always that to remember.
What we have ashore is all the WiFi connectivity we can eat, and an avalanche of technology that is capable of making us more productive, more engaged and with a sense of shared purpose. This is a potential win for any business, but with these tools come threats too.
Technology does not simply deliver solutions, it does not answer problems, it asks questions too. It places demands on all that has gone before. To fully embrace all the tools at our disposal, we need to embrace a demographic power shift. We need to have the vision to see the benefits, but also the wisdom to know the problems. We need to understand how to make the most of what we can have, but all the while keeping what we had. We also need to understand what success looks like. It was astonishing to hear the likes of even the Boss of Goldman Sachs call WFH an “aberration” and not the “new normal”. Seemingly missing the memo, that the people want it and enjoy it.
Harking back to the days of red braces, red 911 and mobile phones the size of a brick. What do we want our accomplishments to look and feel like today? That is very much the focus for maritime informatics at sea, the use of technology to give us the tools to triumph and to make life good and business better.
A CLEAR SENSE OF SELF
Entire industries, whole companies, all employees, each are now faced with a scale and pace of change which is unprecedented. WFH is just a chance to glimpse the future. The good and the bad, the happy and the sad.
Technology is the solution, but to truly make the leaps forward we need the problems must be defined. Tech for tech sake, productivity tools which help organise other productivity tools, layers of new (albeit automated) bureaucracy are not the way forward.
The companies which will succeed will have clean new systems which reflect what they do and how they do it, not just how they would like things to be. The people who will succeed will be those who find the right balance, the right set up, the right priorities and means of getting what they have to do, done.
Within all this, like seafarers on a ship — we need to rally to the flag, to know that we are all in this voyage together. That each of us a vital part to play, and that we have the data, intelligence, systems and support to make the right decisions, wherever we may all be, whether land or sea, or foam.
