By Paul Raftery, CEO, Projects RH
The alarm again rings at 5:30 AM telling me the day is to begin with a visit to the gym. After the usual routine including a call to Olga, my wife Carmenza’s mother, at 7:40 AM, I now either have the choice of heading to my home office, or on the 8:03 AM into the office. The home office most frequently wins.
The scars of the long lockdown are evident, but the first 3 kg of the 8 put on have gone! Looking at my diary I will need to go to the city at least two days this week because people want to meet face-to-face – a little because they can. I suspect in the next few weeks this will reduce; increasingly my Projects RH’s Australian business has been more outside Sydney than in.
I suspect, however, how and where we do business will have changed forever. Projects RH’s global reach has expanded during Covid-19.
Zoom, ClickMeetings and MS Teams have made a substantial contribution to this. Also, for Projects RH, we have worked even more closely with our strategic partners with increasing success not only within Australia and internationally.
The Covid numbers are always important and Australia’s lockdown has had significant impact upon how and where we do business. Our experience at Projects RH is that Melbourne has had a really tough time and today we are doing as much business in Melbourne as we are in Sydney. We are very fortunate to have had strong strategic partners in Melbourne who continued to struggle to do business in more than 240 days of lockdown in less than two years. We are really pleased that Dr Warren Harmer of The Business Planning Company and his partner have booked lunch with us in the first week of January in Sydney. I do miss going to Melbourne at least a monthly basis, particularly not having seen Greg and Kay for nearly 2 years.
At the time of writing, we are promised that the airbridge to Singapore and the road to Brisbane plus greater Queensland will open within few days. We have not seen Justin and Anna, our children, in Brisbane for nearly 2 years so getting them to Sydney or going to Brisbane to see them is a priority. We discuss the opportunity of doing something before Christmas. Following that discussion, the tyranny of distance does not seem so harsh.
The Generational Change
Covid 19 has had great business impacts and in doing direct for so many people. Being at home during lockdown and seeking to work from home has shown the importance of family and tolerance. It is also taught many that they do need work/life balance. We are seeing with our clients that many of the staff are not accepting that they need to be at the office 8 until 6 to show they are good employees, and more importantly, if that is a requirement, they’re leaving.
What we are seeing as part of “We’re Back” is that many good people want different employment.
They are arguing that they need to move to be an employer so that they can cement their work/life balance upfront. We are currently working with a couple of clients and their staff through our advisory board roles to reshape employer expectations and match those employee demands. In practice both are willing to move.
Almost summer!
The Jacarandas are again in bloom telling us that the University year is at an end and another crop of graduates are coming onto the market. They will be much welcomed but what is more important is we have been assured that the Australian tertiary sector will we be receiving foreign university students commencing before Christmas so that they can then roll in 2022. This is important because these students fill many of the roles that students before them, like me, have done working in shops, restaurants, bars and cleaning. All necessary parts of our modern society and part of the value chain.
The newly minted graduates will join a workforce looking for willing and open minds to deliver the new infrastructure we will require.
Big Australia
The calls for 400,000 new Australians a year made by the Premier of NSW represent an important step in the rebuilding of Australia. During the last two years about 125,000 skilled Australians left with the plans not to return. This impacted on economy with close to zero natural population growth. If we look at the roadmap of Australia over the last 20 years, we will see that migration has been the net necessary driver of population and, therefore, economic growth. Clearly, we cannot return to a net 160,000 strict new Australians a year. Last year Canada took on 407,000 new Canadians. Increased migration will see the demand for interest structure and with the jobs, will need housing, accommodation and food, cars, schooling; all those things that put demand on the infrastructure and help change the economy.
Electrification
The opening of Australia has meant that Prime Minister Morrison had little choice but to go to COP26 Inc Glasgow and present Australia’s case. Reluctantly Australia has signed up to net zero carbon emissions by 2050. This too will change how we do things and it will cause investment and reallocation of resources. I for one don’t think it will impact on the exports of the coal, gas or oil industries but we will see a prompt moved to adopt electric cars, buses and even long-haul rail systems. In turn each of these will need retooling and retraining plus provide the opportunity for new investment. We can expect to see Australia lead the world in the manufacture of hydrogen sourced from renewable energy, and with this being converted into ammonia for export and perhaps for the direct use in motor vehicles.
This will drive the demand for mining of rare earths, lithium, copper and silicas in Australia not only for our own demand but for export.
It is expected that by December, Sydney will be well over 90% double vaccinated and open to international travelers.
The Signals are there
In Sydney, Melbourne Cup is never been a public holiday but is celebrated in a different way. I called our favorite Italian restaurant one week before hoping to get a table for eight for dinner. They were uncertain as to how many people would still be there, so I went online and got a table. But it is a sign that the economy has turned; a mere four weeks ago all they did was take away – click and collect as we came to know it. Interestingly, the other people will come for more than 5 km and will be allowed to cross the Harbour Bridge. Yes, we are back!
This Saturday will see the return of my meditation group and whilst we will need to meet in the park this is the first step to returning to normality with our plans to resume inside meditation in the first week of December. One of the interesting things is we won’t have to ask for proof of Covid vaccination. It is expected that Sydney will be well over 90% double vaccinated and open to international travelers.
Christmas at the beach
Returning home for Christmas is now something people can talk about with their children, parents and friends offshore. In Sydney and Melbourne at minimum international visitors will be able to return from November and not go into quarantining for 14 days if they have been double vaccinated and pass a test showing that they don’t carry Covid 19. This is fantastic as for the first time in more than two years many of my friends will be seeing their children returning from overseas spend Christmas with them.
International Students are back too!
2022 will see the arrival back at university of many foreign students. Foreign students make a massive contribution directly and indirectly to the Australian economy. They pay large university fees and consumer services whilst working up to 20 hours a week in the Australian economy. Their presence in the cities and educational towns of Australia will ensure that there is a spring in the merchant step as they have both new consumers and potential employees.
The enabling technology
Whilst we are back it doesn’t mean will all be back at the office. As Mark Hodgson, a well-known Sydney-based management consultant, has told his followers the key impact of Covid 19 was in seven weeks we accepted seven years of technical change. In moving to working from home and having Zoom, Clickmeeting and MS Teams as part of our lives we have made a massive change in how we do business. Whilst we are working even longer hours most of these are from home and have some flexibility around them. We are already hearing that many professional staff are not seeing the need to commute to the office every day and want the flexibility of having worked from home. Whilst many of us miss walking around the office and seeing the team we now form new teams not only with staff but with strategic partners. We are seeing the gig economy in full maturity with clear winners and losers. What has happened is now our world is borderless. In the mornings we are comfortably able to talk with the Americas, in their late afternoons and early evenings; in our evenings we can talk the rest of Asia and into Europe. Equally important is the people in the Americas and Europe have become more flexible as they too were working from home.
Being back as an employee will be very different from the world before. We will not want to be in the office before the boss arrives and still there when he leaves but rather, we will see ourselves valued on the contribution we make in the margins we achieve. Many people will want the human interface of going to the office, that this, will be satisfied by going perhaps one or two days a week. Many organisations have already given up office space and turned even more the office space they have into hot desking, project and meeting rooms. I suspect that the long hours spent in the office will be replaced by long hours spent in the home office and on. Employers will still be able to monitor not only the time their staff spend online but their activity levels. We now have the technology.
Our international clients
For our investment visa clients, we are seeing a significant change in how they wish to proceed. They are wanting to come to Australia so that they can personally be involved in their applications and get a bridging visa to enjoying the time. These business investment and innovation clients are bringing to Australia new business opportunities which will create some of the jobs of the future. Soon Australia will be an exporter of technology and ideas rather than just educational services and things. Our world will see Australia grab the early mover advantage because it was very relatively untouched by the medical side of Covid. Its economy is strong enough and robust enough and did not suffer with the costs associated with Jobkeeper and the stimulus required to fund the infrastructure for the future country. This will give Australia an advantage in returning to the global economy and developing opportunities for smart people. The limited impact Covid 19 had on Australia is highly regarded in many countries and it will see people wanting to come and spend the rest of their lines here. These people will make a strong contribution to the growth of Australia both in the short and medium term. Australia needs to grow its domestic market so that it can change its supply chain dynamics and have increased amount of import substitution. Our clients are already addressing these opportunities, they are looking for mergers, acquisitions and, in some cases, divestments of some of their businesses.
The focus is on moving into what they see as a growing and dynamic businesses which will support the next stage of the company’s economic growth.
Conclusion
I suspect that from 2022 we will get our annual Covid flu shot and it will be like so many other annual things we do. I expect we will see the currency of our inoculation built into our driver’s licenses and passports.
In 2026 I think we all wonder what all the fuss was about and we will see wonderful changes have been made and we will continue to see fossil fuels being exported to the emerging economies. Covid will be seen as the great disruptor which caused us to rethink and live to a new level. At Projects RH we are seeing our people are on the springboard ready to jump!
