There’s no doubt that the pandemic taught as a lot about how we can organise ourselves differently at speed to continue to deliver for our stakeholders – whoever they may be. The pace at which organisations, especially the likes of essential services, retail, distribution and warehousing, adapted to the circumstances was a real lesson in agility. And of course, more widely across business and society changes were made to accommodate the restrictions and risks that were at large.

But just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should and one of the overhangs from the pandemic are a whole range of practices that might have been appropriate at the time, but now just look like organisations, teams and individuals trying to have an easier life. A great example last week was the non-story that KPMG and Deloitte would once again be recruiting in person. It goes without saying that this is a good move for them and for the candidates, however, the fact that it is a story and that it has taken them this long to get there is a bit of a head scratch. I’m not proposing that technology has no part to play in the selection process, but as someone who has interviewed and been interviewed via video, it really isn’t the answer.

Similarly, organisations that moved to “virtual work experience” need to start complementing these with their previous in person work experience programmes to ensure that those people that benefit the most get real and proper access to those opportunities. Easy to deliver, yes. As beneficial to the participants? I’m not convinced in the slightest. And at the end of the day, something being easy was never a measure of success no matter how many happy sheet, participant outcomes you use to defend it.

It would be remiss of me to write a post like this and not mention remote working. How does that one play out? Well it is probably the biggest workplace experiment of our time and the reality is no-one knows. But clinging on to practices as a point of principle is never a good look and those people that have got themselves so dug into the “future of work” rhetoric are already starting to detune and those that don’t are going to look pretty silly if the experiment has a different outcome. That doesn’t make it right or wrong, one of the joys about having a hypothesis is you always have a null hypothesis too, it only makes it stupid if you don’t follow the data.