Today is Good Friday, the Friday before Easter, the day on which all of us Christians annually observe the commemoration of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. We will continue with what we left on hold in our last chapter. Let’s begin.

Spatial Context:

Do we need to include our working well-being premises in the architectural design of homes, neighborhoods, and cities of the future? Is the working current design of our cities inappropriate for a hybrid modality? Is the design of our homes only for a static way of working? Why will a dynamic design help us to thrive? Cities with beautiful trams and trains help the pass-byers to concentrate and read meanwhile commuting large distances. Do we encourage transportation designs for the well-being and comfort of the populations? Exactly, how do we help the most unprotected sectors of the population to consider, fight and respect the hybrid working model in their home spaces for the sake of their kids’ ease? Is it a cost that must be bear by the company? Must companies equip workers with a proper workstation toolkit (desk, laptop, ergonomic chair)? Are enterprises considering physical space outside the job, or is it only a full responsibility of the worker? What is a proper degree of mobility for workers in a hybrid working mode? How long it will take for most of the population to adjust their required spaces at home to reach at least a minimum of acceptable standards? Offices are supposed to be designed for the well-being of workers. Is this happening?

Cultural Context: How would be to work in societies that do not like to mix personal with professional matters? To work from home implies accepting the fact that people are interacting with other members of the family. Interruptions, noises, postponing calls, and interferences when working will be the norm. Are video conferences the proper way to work? Do you like them really? Or can we leave it only for emergency usage? By staying at home all-time the WFH societies have proven to kill economic sectors that depended on mobility. Aren`t we promoting economic exclusion in all those sectors? Have you noticed that all economic sectors related to traditions and arts were hit the most by lack of mobility? Do we want to barren arts from our future?  Why is it crucial to keep LIVE performances and expos alive for the well-being of people? Why should enterprises require to continue sponsoring music, literature, painting, museums, dancing, performing opera,  theater, architecture, sculpture, and cinema trips experiences in the movie theater? Do we require any of these art disciplines as a violence prevention obligation in a NAIQIs world more than ever? Are arts and culture a prerequisite for well-educated people?  When societies eradicate traditional artistic expressions, societies kill the soul of people. How to protect arts from now and then?

As I mentioned in our previous publication, we inserted the educational context in the cultural one, because education helps us not only to be well prepared to make a living and get a good job after academia, but education helps us to be well-grounded and culturally cultivated. How do we need to change schools and universities to prepare the next generations for a hybrid way of doing things? Is this the way to go?. Eleonora Escalante Strategy believes that schools and universities require an in-presence traditional model, not a virtual one. How to help the new coming scientists and academic inventors to learn how to pause with technologies? How can teachers promote integral contextual analysis before decision-making since kindergarten? How to help teachers to insert the DBR (Design-Based Research) in each and all subjects of teaching? Are we ready to provoke a transformation of this caliber in all our educational systems? How to stop NAIQIs to harm the brains of kids and teens when it comes to problem-solving? How to help new workers (without a formal degree of education) find a roadmap for integral well-being, no matter if rich or poor? How to stop the migration or substitution of traditional education with artificial intelligence education tools and applications? How to keep a correct balance between virtual and real education? How to teach moderation at the early stages of education, so we can reap moderate citizens ready for a hybrid-working schedule when they join the workforce?

Political: Are government entities the first ones to test the hybrid model with 6 hours a day? How do we put boundaries to repressive or dictatorial government leaders who expect a 24/7 schedule? Are political parties entitled to do something about it? Power politics can ruin a private sector from its roots.  With COVID19, the reversal of our freedom as individuals was touched by the politicians, to a limit in which all our human rights were canceled. How do we maintain human rights as an alignment priority in the government and private sector?  How do governments react in the middle of a crisis of different nature affecting the working models of the population (crises such as wars, inequity migrations and refugees, natural disasters, famine, financial catastrophes, climate change, and global pandemic sicknesses)? Flexible protocols for working are needed in case of crisis. Are governments of all countries ready for each possible scenario to help societies to continue work? The global supply chains have lessened the capacity of response that each country has in the middle of a crisis? Can we detract a bit from globalization at least in terms of food production and basic needs when in times of a crisis? How can societies promote an equilibrium between globalization and local responsiveness when it comes to political decision-making and its relation to working?

Environmental:  How to promote, protect and prevent damage to the environment by choosing a hybrid working model? How to help societies to repair all the causes of contamination using a hybrid working model? Can we begin to use eco-friendly transportation alternatives in parallel to our cars? Societies without electric trains or trams have proven to be a focus of high contamination. Aren`t we using more electricity by working from home? Any form of transportation that is not ecofriendly is affecting the environment. Any urbanization that takes the land from animals and plants, is also hurting the environment.  How to keep a correct balance between human development and the environment? How to insert climate change into each and all enterprises as a priority for working? Are the millennium development goals enough to protect the environment?

Ethical: This ethical factor is the pivotal factor that agglutinates the rest of the perspectives. It is impossible to create a research agenda for working in the future in the middle of risks associated with our existence (the same risks factors affecting the bees); without an ethical coherent guideline. Ethics matter the most when it comes to working under a hybrid model, and under a 6 hours schedule. It requires education on ethical values since the individual is born. The degree of ethical behavior is the success of the rest of the dimensions exposed today. Without the employment of fair and good quality, even in the services sector, all our working research agenda vanishes. Our working methods have to reflect the following ethical values or virtues in thought and practice: humbleness, meekness, peacemaking, compassion, rejoicing for others, hunger for righteousness, mercy, courage under suffering, truth, purity of heart, faith and hope, love, integrity. For example, a workforce that receives a paycheck for 6 working hours per day has to show respect for working 6 hours, not 4 and a half, meanwhile, 1.5 hours is used for cooking and watching youtube videos. Any hybrid working model requires the implementation of all these ethical virtues in action. How to teach ethical virtues in reality in our educational systems to prepare a society for a successful working hybrid model?

Financial: why do we need a virtual economic system? Why do we need to leave cash behind and use crypto wallets? What is the purpose of this transformation, only money for those in the virtual money business, or is it promoting something good? Why is the appearance of portable digital money a sign that something immoral and wicked is coming to happen in the financial sector?  Why don´t we start by humanizing or improving the traditional financial system first? Transactions occur because humans assign an intrinsic or underlying value to what they need and want and cant produce by themselves. There is a market (a demand-supply game) that affects that intrinsic value. What are the premises of digital money when it comes to transactions and the market? Why is it convenient to keep different currencies for the long term, instead of a universal one? Is a cashless society that utilizes smartphones to transfer resources the most convenient one? Aren´t we dumping our financial systems by linking them with the Internet?   Aren´t workers more stressed with the cryptos than before? Why do we want to turn our financial systems into a “Las Vegas betting digital portable system”? What is the real consigne behind this forced transformation? Who will win with the digital cash-less society? Aren´t we leaving the real money for the virtual, adding a new risk factor to our broken society?

Spiritual Context: How to love God in the middle of a different working style? Are our ritual religious practices crucial to keeping our workers’ ethical guidelines? Aren´t we workers of faith? Why does religion matter in the context of working more in less time for the same paycheck? Workers who practice religion for spiritual calm and stability within a community are proven to hold a better emotional intelligence, much required in the workforce. Do we need to promote the religious rituals, in a society where more and more are landing into atheism? How do we support religious-spiritual praying time for self-control? Are churches helping to teach us how to restrain anger, selfishness, and revenge which are elements growing with the NAIQIs? Lack of compassion and solidarity in the NAIQI-Giga era is ubiquitous nowadays. How to help societies to recover from the loss of spiritual content in the material superficial internet world?

Well-being Integral: There are several factors involved in the well-being of individuals. You can find several frameworks listed on the Internet. I will stick to one prepared by an entity called New Horizons from Australia, because it is the simplest framework I could find, adapted with specialist services to span disability, mental health, youth, aged care, indigenous, and homelessness. I also have chosen this framework with a futurist view: If we don´t repair our universe, and we proceed with the Industry 4.0 and the NAIQIs technologies, all of us in the world will end up living as disabled people. That is the future that awaits us if we don´t put human integral well-being in our working models. Look at the following slides and print them if you wish:

If we don´t put people at the core of our working models, particularly if we don´t reduce our workloads to 6 hours a day, and we continue working in front of computer work-stations daily without moving, only inside our prison residences, we won´t be able to enjoy life in the future. Our health (mental, physical, cognitive-educational, social-emotional-cultural) will be impacted and we will suffer a lot more when aging. We believe that after 15 years of DBR research, the answer to all these questions will position the hybrid model as an imperative flexible option in times of crisis for everyone, as a feasible choice for some industries, or on a case-by-case basis, for seasonal reasons. Additionally, the hybrid working model will be perfect for those who are affected with mobility problems, or for working parents that need to stay at home for the first 6 years of their kids’ existence. Once kids are able to begin their K-12 educational journey, employees will be able to return to work in the office and/or keep the hybrid working options open. In relation to education, if we force our learners (K-12 students, university pupils, and researchers) to study from home we are killing their well-being in advance. Six hours of working per day are enough for making a beautiful display for our journey called life.

Holy Friday deserves veneration and reverence for Jesus Christ’s suffering. Today I won´t publish the Strategic Music Section. See you next week, blessings, and thank you for reading to me.

Sources of reference used for this publication.

1. https://www.newhorizons.org.au/#

Disclaimer: Illustrations in Watercolor are painted by Eleonora Escalante. Other types of illustrations or videos (which are not mine) are used for educational purposes ONLY. Nevertheless, most of the pictures, images, or videos shown on this blog are not mine. I do not own any of the lovely photos or images posted unless otherwise stated.

Published by eleonoraescalantestrategy

Corporate Strategy Artist, San Salvador, El Salvador View all posts by eleonoraescalantestrategy