I miss my community around the chalkboards
Every morning of my 52 years of working life, I have donned a business suit, cotton shirt, tie and a pair of polished, leather shoes. Well, that was until March 2020, when, compelled to work from home, I swopped my stockbroking attire for track pants, a T-shirt and Converse sneakers.
My dress code isn’t the only adjustment I have had to make. Staring at my desk first thing in the morning as I awaken and last thing at night before I close my eyes, has left me accepting that I’m now living at work.
Each day I dutifully tackle swamps of mails and, while I’ve mastered the technological demands of a home office, conversing with clients and colleagues over Zoom and Teams has required cultivating a new set of communication skills.
I can’t complain, though. Considering all the bad news the country and industry have had to navigate, stock markets have held up far better than we expected. It’s made my days busy. Participating in podcasts and webinars and appearing regularly on TV have opened new channels of learning, as well as helping me broaden my contact base. I’m not exhausted or stressed. I feel fit and healthy and I’m enjoying what I’m doing. Yet, I do miss the office.
I miss the smell of freshly brewed coffee that greets me at the entrance early in the morning. I miss the small talk and smiles from colleagues that I encounter ambling to my office.
Without wanting to question the apparent cost savings and efficiencies of operating a remote workforce, how can we cultivate the ethos of a firm — its traditions, customs and position it occupies in society — outside a workplace?
How can we mentor young people to convert their learning into practice? Or monitor their behaviour when dealing with clients for the first time? Much of the value of a business rests on what its people stand for, and the further they drift from the mother ship, the harder it becomes to steer their virtues.
I was fortunate to have spent several years working on the floor of the JSE. For more than 100 years, members and clerks dealt with each other, huddled together in front of chalkboards displaying the latest prices of the various listed securities.
The trading floor was more than simply a place on which to transact business. It was a community where lifelong friendships and partnerships were developed. It was a community who toasted births and stood a minute’s silence for deaths.
In 1996 when the JSE closed the trading hall and moved from open outcry dealing to electronic trading, the community fragmented overnight, relocating to hushed dealing rooms spread across the country.
No-one challenged the need to scrap the antiquated and cumbersome manual system. The move to electronic trading made everyone richer. But sitting at a computer screen could never emulate the humour, banter and mischievousness that bound the dealers on the floor.
Like modern global exchanges, the JSE is a technology-driven marketplace, run by a professional management team that continues to grow its profits and pay handsome dividends. Sitting isolated in a corner of my home, I am set up to transact for clients in most of the world’s big markets at the touch of a button. I am writing more business than at any other time in my career in investments.
Yet, rootless in this virtual world, I yearn for the hustle and bustle of dealers rushing to the floor for High Change, hearing anecdotes about those who shaped the exchange’s colourful history and getting a real handshake or hug on my birthday.