No surprises things are changing. Work. Tech. Cities. The world. Our normal is changing. But
what about you? How are you changing? When are you at your best? Morning or night? What's harder?
Switching on or off? Is it easier to connect or harder? Is the screen enough or not enough?
Can you think? I mean, actually think? Here take a second.
Things are changing and with big change comes big opportunity, not just to rethink the way
we work or how we embrace technology, but for us, you and me right now. We are living change.
The past year has been a really interesting experiment into how we work. We've embraced
change, we continue to adapt and now we're living change. But flexible working isn't
new. We're just doing it better and we're doing it at scale. And technology has made that possible.
But we are social beings and we build and sustain our culture through human interaction
and ideas are sparked by being around others. Over this past year I've learned probably more
than anything else, how important it is to listen. A human-centered design model is
foundational to supporting our people, our teams, our businesses and our purpose. What
I've learned is obviously how resilient we are as an organisation, as a city, but more than that,
I think I've learned that post-traumatic growth is more common than post-traumatic stress. We grew,
we innovated and we thought about different ways to look after ourselves, but to look after our
customers as well. You dial up on the video, you see someone's background, you see their library,
you see what they're wearing, taking that comfort and that interactivity and understanding that the
person as an individual as opposed to their role, I think it's a very positive thing. We need to be
careful not to to lose that sense of purposeful connectivity that we've had over the last year.
That we've been able to trust each other and trust that you know our employees and people
are going to get work done and be productive no matter where they are. Let's not go backwards,
let's not unlearn how we can all work flexibly together. This year has changed everything I
thought about the workplace experience. I'm really excited to get back to what's most important and
that's helping support our employees, removing any roadblocks for them to do their best work,
helping them foster connection and helping with their work-life balance. What we really try to
emphasise and focus on is moving away from the conversation of workplace to workforce and what
we mean by that is we should focus on people first and then build an environment that supports them,
allows them to thrive and with that the company thrive. So we're seeing technology start to help
us integrate our commitments inside and outside work to create healthier habits. Our collaboration
and productivity tools are now using data machine learning and artificial intelligence to help
us all become a lot more personally productive. There's an increasing opportunity to combine great
technology and great physical spaces, to help bring people together, to innovate and solve for a
better future. Technology has really levelled the playing field for all, minimising distractions,
maximising our abilities to connect at home. We've already seen the massive digital transformation
that's been accelerated by COVID and I think this gives us a great opportunity, at the same time
really ensuring that we focus on culture as well. The culture of our teams. The culture
that you have and the way you experience it, the way leadership works, is really the most important
thing. I don't think the workplace is going to dictate those norms as much as the way that humans
interact. I think the big thing in the workplace is going to be inclusion and technology's got
a massive role to play in how inclusive our workplaces and our work tasks can be for those
who are not geographically close together. It's really about understanding how people are really
utilising our digital tools and our physical spaces in real time. Having that level of data is
what's going to allow us to augment, to change, to adapt. Technology will continue to make our lives
easier. It eases our communications and travel and business and really helps foster connection. And
I think we can have it all. I think we can work globally, small agile teams ramp up ramp down and
at the same time have a quality of life and live where we want. We're at the impetus of new change
and I'm really excited about the opportunities that are coming. The ability for technology
to seamlessly connect a global workplace community is inspiring. The opportunity to
create a more dynamic, inclusive and sustainable workplace is compelling. We are living change.