\"Doomed to extinction\"? The rise and fall of corporate resilience?

Once it was MY PLACE, now it's the railway

I know, of course, I know, that the domestic subspecies of the internationally dominant multisaurus (Magyar Telekom) has from a four-day working week in February this year, while the Hungarian employment giant (MÁV) has recently announced the home office, and to conflate these completely unrelated events is not very stylish - I'm aware of that. But for me, these two seemingly different but, I think, very similar manifestations of the same root, which fundamentally affect the way we work, somehow remind me of the same thing, the rise and fall of Homo Erectus ('erect' man) and Homo Ergaster ('working' or, if you like, 'labouring' man), considered by many palaeontologists/anthropologists to be its predecessor:

A few years ago, the science news portal PhysOrg reported that an archaeological-anthropological study of a prehuman population from the early Stone Age in what is now the Arabian Peninsula suggested that they were Homo erectus/Ergaster, although they had much more advanced tool-making (working) skills than their prehuman ancestors, and placed greater emphasis on the production and use of their tools (for example, an obsidian 'working workshop' dating back 1.2 million years was found at the Melka Kunture archaeological site in Ethiopia. This is a strikingly early example of obsidian working, since this type of 'industrial activity', which requires extremely fine skills, considerable dexterity and cognitive abilities, was previously thought to be typical only of the Upper Pleistocene - 40,000 years ago - and European areas), they did not really exert themselves when faced with atypical work, and this kind of "laziness", indirectly linked to the "laziness" of adapting to changes in the environment - climate , could well have played a major role in the total extinction of the species...

In fact, it seems from the finds that when it came to tool-making, any of the stones lying around their campsites would have done for Homo erectus/Ergaster, even though they were mostly of much poorer quality than those they could have found or used on a nearby rocky high ground. They knew that the more suitable stones were there, but as they had plenty of other raw materials, they didn't "bother" to go back and forth, digging, transporting, changing their routine...

At the same time, this was in stark contrast to the practice of other toolmakers of later ages, including early Homo Sapiens ('intelligent' or 'thinking' man) and Neanderthal man, who literally climbed mountains in search of good quality stones. It is therefore incomprehensible why Homo erectus/Ergaster did not do so, despite the fact that everything around them was undergoing profound changes: the environment, for example, was becoming increasingly deserted, but they ignored all this and kept doing the same things, in the same way, with the same materials and tools, completely neglecting the 'technological' and 'working' innovations for an arid climate. Perhaps, they were not only lazy, but also too martial (conservative? "typical"?)...?!

When a (living) organism (organism) is confronted with a new situation, the surface reactions are immediate and immediate, but usually not lasting. The necessary, deeper ("Darwinian") changes arrive more slowly and indirectly. Internal, deep, developmental/developmental compulsive and action-inducing responses to problematic external influences are difficult to initiate and only follow external reactions indirectly, but are more massive, more durable and essential for long-term success. However, inactivity (laziness), lack of innovation (conservatism) and fear of the unknown future (phobia) inhibit these necessary changes, which can lead to the destruction of organisations - in this case Homo Ergaster, and then Homo Erectus...

But the "stupidity" of Homo Erectus/Ergaster is millions of years away from the "intelligence" of Homo Sapiens Sapiens working today! So what do we have to do with them?!! -

But the analogy is very much alive, although we are indeed no longer in the Stone Age. We are now more in the age of immunology. The environment is changing, crises come and go, viruses and wars decimate, challenges multiply, problems pile up, and the vast majority of our companies, institutions and work communities - with the mammoths in the lead - expectantly build up their defensive structures and employment/employment systems to a given situation, effectively eliminating flexibility, adaptability, adaptation, innovation, risk-taking from the workplace, and thus depriving themselves of the ability to respond successfully to change in the longer term. Then, in a crisis, when the perceived static environment of a fortress organisation changes with unpredictable speed, dysfunction ensues, but once the trouble has subsided, returning behind the perceived walls of security becomes the top priority almost immediately: their fear of change (metathesiophobia) is nothing more than an heightened - emotional - immune response (defence mechanism) to change itself. And this is what we see in the behaviour, decisions and communications of Magyar Telekom and MÁV, but also of many other large mammoth companies (Google, JPMorgan, Meta (the operator of Facebook), IBM, Amazon, etc.) and their managers, owners and representatives.

Those who say it's impossible, at least don't discourage those who are already doing it

By the way, there are plenty of other facts, different readings of opinions, progressive (not defensive) signs, predictions and actions:

- In ten years, one in three white-collar workers will be working away from their jobs, due in part to the unstoppable rise of algorithmicization and artificial intelligence;

- 10 to 15 percent of workers would not give up the home office for anything, with 20 to 29 percent only willing to give it up in exchange for a pay rise;

- an additional 50-55 percent would only return to work in offices if the normal workday from 9am to 5pm was made flexible;

- conservative estimates also suggest that time spent AT work is only half of the time spent AT work;

- It is true that the introduction of the 'home office' pilot had no significant impact on work efficiency in half of the cases, but it increased it for 40 per cent of employees (!) and only 10 per cent of staff experienced a decrease in performance or other deterioration;

Even the top people in the world's largest companies (64 per cent!) - and of course some political leaders too, as the example of János Lázár, Hungarian Minister of Construction and Transport, in the case of MÁV, shows - want to fully restore traditional office working in the next three years, and 87% want to encourage (but perhaps it is more appropriate to use the word 'nudge') it, or will simply order/command it - as our Minister Lazar did, demonstrating little in the way of employee consensus-building, employee engagement, real problem-solving and/or HR strategic sensitivity and labour market knowledge.

Because the 'home office' - and its corollary, another atypical working hit, the 'reduced hours' - is more than a fad success recipe, a grateful conference theme, a necessary branding exercise or a pretend experiment in proactivity. Beyond the fact that both are effective crisis management tools, perhaps more importantly, they are also reactions/responses to 'people management' forced by technological progress, which is a way out of the defences offered by the clinging to the familiar (ultra-conservatism), in its diverse (capable of running several HR systems simultaneously and in parallel) and personalised (taking into account individual employee needs) way, can provide employees and employers with a long-term solution

- real engagement,

- (work)community well-being,

- feelings of existential security,

- long-term employment cooperation,

-- and constructive, peaceful - not combative! - (according to press reports, János Lázár also pulled the wool over the eyes of the railway unions with his decision to end the 'home office' option).

Yes, but the first one to go over the wall bleeds from several wounds! And that

- the multinationals can't afford it (just scrape the hot chestnuts out of the fire someone else!),

- and public bodies and institutions can't afford it (because they are prisoners of their own paradigms, even centuries-old legislation),

and so it's more convenient (and risk-free, of course!) to trumpet "these irregular systems are impossible" through every available channel of the labour market media.

And I suggest, dear haredi, that we shout back at them boldly: those who say it's impossible should at least not inhibit those who are already doing it, because in the end, sooner or later, Darwin and evolution will be right: \"It is not the strongest organism that will survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one that is most susceptible to change."

Caption: Pixabay