This summer we put our conversation on hold; we discussed a lot about the back-then latest new normal and had the chance to walk you all through our journey towards facing this unexpected challenge. I must admit it, going through the pandemic has been a path that demanded the collaboration of everybody, a “3R journey” witnessing how we Reacted to the chaos, Recovered from the uncertain and Restored, always looking ahead.

Now that 2020 is well behind us, 2021 is coming to an end and 2022 is right around the corner, it’s time to relocate the compass needle, pointing to the next normal.

The Hybrid Working Alliance

The last 18 months have been all about the remote working experience: how to implement it, strengthen it, engage in it. To rephrase it, how to make it happen the right way. Indeed, suddenly shifting from a traditional to a peculiar, new way of working has been quite a change both organisations and people needed time to process and to realise how to handle. And what was meant to be a temporary adjustment turned into one of the main pillars we are building the office of the future upon.

If these two years have taught us anything is that re-emerging from the ashes of a battle that paused human interactions for quite a while, people more than ever before crave investment in the human aspects of work. The design of a fulfilling people experience is therefore decisive and begins with an extensive investment in your people; meeting new demands for flexibility at work becomes vital, but also skilling and reskilling, providing ongoing training to join into a thriving post-pandemic hybrid working alliance.

November 2021 marks the start of Objectway Academy, a training programme focusing on enhancing the smart, flexible, agile way of working. The full hybrid model we’ll be adopting will be founded on brand new assumptions and principals, inspired by flexibility, simplicity, attention to people’s needs and responsibility.

Delving into the tools and expertise needed to face the next working horizon, the programme aims at increasing the key competences of the “smart worker”: accountability and sharing, autonomy and time management, communication and opening to feedback.

The OW Academy is an opportunity to meet and discuss, to share and enrich, but also a concrete step towards building an organisation where work boundaries are meant to fade, where people are our most important and meaningful asset, where a renewed sense of purpose is revealed; an organisation steeped in a sense of shared identity, where people aspire to act and change the usual working rules, re-imagining how they work, how they manage their time, how they coach and mentor, how they engage in their team.

At the end of the day, we all agree that the pandemic has irrevocably changed what is expected from the so-called 3W: Work, Workspace, Workforce. We are constantly investing in effectively managing coordination processes, therefore holistically strengthening work; in extensively employing collaboration tools, therefore creating an innovation, hybrid workspace; in guaranteeing that people have the expertise and knowledge to face today’s and tomorrow’s post-pandemic challenges, never underestimating work-life balance.

It all comes back to this eventually, that there is no black and white solution. We designed our very own and painted it in gradients and portrayed a hybrid workspace project that is tailored for our reality.