Health, smart cities and resilient workplaces will inform Australia’s success in living with COVID

An expert panel convened by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) and sponsored by GSK Australia has highlighted that re-evaluating our approach to the way we design our cities for work, education and leisure will be important in the management of future pandemics.

The panel discussion, ‘Proofing against future pandemics’, focused on how health, smart cities and resilient workplaces will inform Australia’s success as we learn to live with COVID-19.

Panellist Jeff Connolly (pictured above), Chief Executive at Siemens ANZ, emphasised smart technology as a critical lever to address the global challenges of pandemics.

Connolly highlighted “we used to be bricks and steel only, but now we've got fully intelligent buildings and infrastructure. Pandemics require the real-time response that technology can provide, helping us to address the challenges of future pandemics.

“At the start of the COVID-19, we used a lot of preventative measures with some of them proving unnecessary later. This was all because our environments were not designed to contain a virus like COVID-19. We now have an opportunity to use smart technology so we can design these environments with purpose.

“Digitalisation is at the heart of the solution. Smart technology is already being used in purpose-built locations like the National Gallery of Victoria. Solutions like increased filtration, UV lighting and ionization mean we’re able to address the challenges of the disrupted cities we now live in.”

David Fitz-Gerald, GSK Australia and New Zealand Head of Human Resources, said building resilience into the workplace requires a change in culture and noted “GSK is known as an innovator in medicines and vaccines. The COVID-19 pandemic prompted us to take further steps forward as an innovative workplace.

“It prompted us to find new ways to support our people to thrive. We have applied a new philosophy of ‘flex-pathy’, providing our workforce with ‘maximum flexibility’, coupled with clear and consistent communication. This philosophy was embedded while also ensuring a sustained focus on our company goals.”

Fitz-Gerald also said that companies that apply lessons from the pandemic will reap the benefits when it comes to attracting talent in competitive labour markets.

“Looking to the future, we created a framework, called ‘Performance with Choice,’ which is brought to life in our culture, not in policy.  We encourage our people to have open conversations to identify ways of working that support their performance and their team and to feel safe and secure knowing that this flexibility is available to them.”

Panellist Malcolm Smith, Australasian Cities Leaders, Arup added “Cities are not just about physical structures, they are representations of our social and economic aspirations. When we have our cities disrupted, it affects all of those aspects. We need to understand re-integration of those aspects as we come out of disruption and model new scenarios with the lessons we’ve learnt.

“This includes seeing an increase in local trends, provision of services and changes to the composition and concentration of city centres. This has consistently played out in the pandemic as we saw inequitable access to open space across the world.

“We now have the digital capacity to monitor the impact of disruption and its social effect on our cities – and we need to use it. We need to model our cities for multiple-use scenarios and have a conversation about making this a requirement for city design, like some countries in Europe.”

The panel discussion was facilitated by Dr Mel Miller, partner of Deloitte Access Economics, and was the second in a series of three sessions that focus on Australia’s post-pandemic future.

The next “Pandemic to Endemic” panel discussion will be held in February 2022.

Image top: Smart technology is already being used in purpose-built locations like the National Gallery of Victoria; Image above: Panellist Jeff Connolly, Chief Executive at Siemens ANZ, emphasised smart technology as a critical lever to address the global challenges of pandemics.