MK: There was an existential phenomenon acknowledged by Merleau-Ponty and I don’t want to get too poetic but he talked about the flesh as an element of being like earth, air, fire, water and flesh and that physical presence of being with another human being cannot be substituted.
Nozipho Tshabalala, part of the OD team in SA, comments specifically on how Investec’s Client Support Centre, known as the CSC, is missing being together as a team, in one shared space.
NT: It has been very hard you know there is a sense of connectivity when you are online but I think the sense of belonging that lives outside of that is a difficultly for a lot of people so if I’m not online how do I belong? We see this with our sales teams in the banking space and the CSC feed off of that and they need that energy to be able to do their work. So in the absence of seeing a screen or the colleague next to you screaming they’ve just closed a deal it that sense of belonging to a team that is holding an energy to enable performance is being deeply felt.”
MK: Investec’s relationship-driven culture can be observed in many ways, one of them is that meetings don’t always start on time. Lucre explains a phenomenon known as “Investec time”…
LG: We always say that there is an Investec time which means that people normally start meetings you know five or sometimes ten minutes late and that’s not because people are lazy or of course they are not watching the time. It’s just because it’s that banter, that informality and talking about so many other things before going in to task and I think that unfortunately that is lost because you know there is no corridor there is no staircase there is no canteen to bump into each other and just start an informal conversation.
So, I think that that certainly affects that sense of belonging on the one hand, but we are living in a very paradoxical world where you know both things are true. On the one hand, I do think that the sense of belonging is being lost by all these conditions that are being affected as we are describing on the one hand.
On the other hand, I do think that maybe for some individuals and hopefully for the majority of individuals there is a strong reconnection with a sense of belonging. I think that people are coming together they are showing their human side they care about Investec they are putting Investec first. I see less of competition amongst teams and more about let’s put the client at the centre let’s go the extra mile so, on the other hand, I feel there is a real invigorating the sense of belonging.
MK: I want to bring in Zandile here as she had an interesting observation to share about how Covid-19 is a great “leveler”. She references a colleague of ours, Chris. That’s Chris Meyer Head of Corporate and Investment Banking in the UK office.
ZN: I think one of my immediate thoughts is that this whole COVID crisis has been an incredible leveler which means that none of us have experience of it so we are all starting off the same base and we are all exploring this together which I think gives us a heightened sense of we’re in this together so the sense of belonging is therefore enhanced in a way.
I was on a call last week with CIB and Chris started off the call kind of speaks to what Lucre was saying, but Chris started off the call the first ten minutes of the call he spoke about his own experience and grappling with what is the new normal and he was quite vulnerable in doing that. And he spoke about the loneliness he felt in that and I think just in expressing that to I think there was probably over 700 people who were listening in to the call, expressing that created this sense of I’m in it with you,
I feel this with you, I’m grappling with this with you let’s all try and deal with this together and I really thought that that embodied what belonging is, what inclusion is, what that sense that we can be vulnerable in that situation and that we are all doing it together.