3.15 — weeknotes — snow! haircuts and a new lobby needed…
A bit more hope emerging this week as we enter the next stage of coming out of lockdown — with gyms, shops and pub gardens opening. How did the weather welcome this news — well Monday we had snow for pretty much the majority of the morning, not that I was planning on getting to the pub garden straight away! (actually have that booked for Sunday, very much looking forward to that!).
Clearly I was not that interested in the hairdressers opening — one advantage of not having any!
Has been a quiet week this week and a bit of space to think, a fair few people on leave as well, enjoying the snow and the sunshine. Lots of colleagues away or about to be away in their motorhomes/campervans etc AND I am sooo jealous. One colleague was taking flexible and mobile working to a whole new level, doing video calls from their van — awesome! What good technology we have :-) Next week off though….
Another busy week with the World of Work. A number of meetings during the week, really starting to gather some pace and get our thinking from the theory to the very practical. Had a project board meeting as well where we went through the scope of work — there are many elements of it that we are trying to weave together here including our buildings; people; tech; wellbeing; learning and so on — lots of activities already in flight.
My main takeaway from these discussions this week is that we really are thinking bold here and that we do not want to go back to old ways of working. BUT…we absolutely are going to support staff in this, have said a couple of times this week that there will be no ribbon cutting and balloons on the 21 June (or whatever date it becomes). We will ensure a very gradual return to offices and time to see colleagues, get used to public transport and clear the year old fruit from lockers!
Kicked off the project this week for the corporate risk and performance system with Pentana — lots of work going into this to change the way in which we manage risk, performance and programmes across the council. Going to be fun!
Couple of nice things to end the week. I popped into the planning meeting for the up and coming Elections and the lead officer managing the elections was happy and even had a smile of their faces!!! Let’s make sure that continues.
Finally some progress with our recruitment and little bit of four steps forward and half a step back but making good progress and a great team coming together.
So I was thinking this week, wouldn’t it be nice if the lobby in MS Teams was actually a virtual lobby not just a note saying we have let your hosts know you are waiting, somewhere where you can have a coffee, see some plants, talk to other people in the lobby — rather than this bland — we have told your hosts you are waiting. Definitely an improvement needed there MS!!
No weeknotes from me next week, on leave so hoping the weather stays good!
Tune of the week: Petula Clark Downtown. original version
