Missing the moment

“In mid-March last year, our world got tipped upside down and Telstra made a bold choice to tell 25,000 people to work from home, literally overnight.

Australian businesses grappled with the challenge. And for a long time now it’s been about ‘How do we get back to normal?’ It’s been in our language; it’s been in our psyche. And that’s the biggest risk we face in terms of missing the moment.

I don’t believe that we’ll get back to ‘normal’ and I also don’t think it should be our ambition to get back to ‘normal’. Our ambition should be bigger. We have disrupted, we have changed, we have responded. Here’s an opportunity to do things differently.

If working from home is a mitigant for business continuity, it also creates an opportunity for us in Australia to look at how remote working improves regional employment and female employment and participation in the workforce.

Let’s not miss the moment and just respond to the risks. Instead, let’s think about the new playing field that’s been created and be deliberate in what that’s going to look like. It’s balancing a risk, a reaction and then a new opportunity.”