With heart on sleeve – the new business norm

In my position at Veeam, I have the pleasure of hearing staff across APJ express their gratitude for feeling supported and valued in a safe environment. I know that this new era of business has moved way beyond the notions of diversity, inclusion, and hybrid work models.

Putting those concepts into practice, which many companies are already successfully doing, is one thing. Being outspoken about and taking ownership of those concepts as a daily way of living and working, encouraging genuine pride, is another thing, and is the obvious way forward to inspire, motivate and be successful in business. It is being proven through efficiencies and business growth that a genuine acceptance of each other’s individuality is the core of company culture and the greatest driver of innovation.

We are humans first, businesspeople second. In our personal lives as well as in our work, we need to look to being adaptable to change and resilient to challenges and setbacks. We are in the midst of a critical, global shift, brought into focus by circumstances, some beyond our control, some that we are fighting hard to influence – pandemic and climate change, political divisiveness and human rights. And within such colossal world events, we are people, seeking to live meaningful lives at home, with our families and loved ones. All of that we bring into our working environment, where a simple thing like acceptance can facilitate so many transactions.

This is an age of wearing our hearts on our sleeves. No longer a starched business shirt sleeve. Formality in business is not just outmoded in our attire. It has become incongruous with our relationships at even the highest levels. Talking about who we are, what we look like, what we believe in, who we love, how we want to dress, what kinds of accessibilities we might need to function each day, is the new business norm. From presidents and prime ministers to CEOs and through every level of management, true enablement is a matter of heartfelt pride.

A dynamic and transparent working model that empowers people to share differing perspectives, experiences and knowledge leads to a more collaborative culture. Collaboration within an organisation feeds into better collaborations with partners and other external stakeholders. And that in turn feeds into profits, where market position is so intrinsically linked to the people inside a company. What comes from within is what a truly inclusive company puts out.

One of the many paradoxes of the globally accepted way of working for more than two years now is that people can come together often more closely when they are working apart. Isolation immediately enabled working from home, and conferencing on screen could be more intimate and focused than staying on point in a boardroom. Diversity became an up-close zoomed-in reality, and the closer the focus, the more natural our differences became. And in a practical sense, teams got better at sharing resources and information, and in turn responded more quickly to business and customer challenges.

Now that we have morphed into a hybrid work model that is accepted as standard, especially for organisations whose staff spend much of their day at desks in front of a computer screen, it feeds back into the innate diversity and inclusion of a company and there is a two-fold responsibility to embrace the nature of who we all are. The office will offer a welcoming, safe and attractive environment for staff to meet and interface in a space that is real, and the havens that are people’s homes and have become rooms in virtual meeting places will be respected and regarded as safe from any judgement or invasive pressure. Leaders step up to meet the challenge of harnessing talent and meeting deadlines while providing flexibility in how their staff members achieve targets, at all times nurturing a safe space for them to express themselves and succeed. It is an exciting evolution.

Members of our Veeam teams across APJ have talked about feeling safe, heard, supported and valued for who they are. They referred to feeling free to be their true, authentic selves; honouring their different backgrounds, strengths, expertise and ideas; and listening with an open mind, accepting each other’s behaviour into their hearts.

This is today’s business world, and there is no turning back. We can roll up our sleeves and get on with the job, knowing that our hearts are right there, unshakeably attached to whatever we wear.

Shiva Pillay is the general manager and senior vice president, Asia & Japan, for Veeam Software