This week many of us across the nation have been on tenterhooks. The big question being, will we receive a ping and have to go into isolation, due to a COVID-related contact and right before we go on holiday.

With rising cases across the UK, and in now other countries across Europe, the stress has been palpable. After a year of changing plans, many of us have been taking things day by day, looking forward to things to keep us going. Next up was the summer holidays….

Hopefully, most folks are able to get away or have a break at least.

Flexible nano-machines

Workwise, I got completely sidetracked during the week by two ideas and their combined implications.

The first was a video on flexible machines via Veritasium (a great youtube channel if you are into sciency stuff btw). It was about how machines can be redesigned rather than having mechanical joints to have ‘bendy’ bits.

The other was an article on new technology using finger sweat to power wearable medical devices.

Why is this interesting? Because flexible machines can be printed. If they can be printed, they can be made anywhere and also be made very small. Very small also means low power requirements, even powered by the human body itself. It is amazing progress, allowing us to create small, self-powered machines to get things done. Nano robots here we come!

At the moment we spend so much time in the digital world, it can be easy to forget that there is a physical world too, and actually getting things done is really quite important.

In reality

The same is true for work. Many advances in digital interaction, data and insight have been wonderful. However, at the end of the line, there is a customer, the ultimate user of services, who also need to get things done or make things happen.

The real-world matters, and our digital processes, at some point, need to translate into making things happen, in reality.

Where this point of transition happens is of course critically important. Too early, time and resources are wasted, too late, opportunities are missed.

So with all the clamour on digitalisation, maybe we need to re-frame our thinking. Rather than digtial replacing physical services completely, we need to think in much more blended terms.

How do our new digital process support the end customer journey to get the right physical output? Not nanomachines, but worth keeping in mind.

Have a good weekend everyone.

Other key stories

• Bank of England warns it could step in to curb rising inflation
• Up to 20 per cent of staff absent from companies after being ‘pinged’ by Covid app
• UK house prices rise by 10% amid stamp duty holiday rush | House prices
• Consumer spending climbs
• Banks urged to remember pressures consumer and businesses face
• Price rises speed up again as economy unlocks
• Pandemic widens the wealth gap

When everything is busy it is all too easy to let less exciting areas of admin slip a little. Expenses, accounting, even catching up on events and getting time for future planning can be tricky.

It has been a bit like this recently, and with travel starting again the pressure is only going to increase. It will be back to shopping whilst on the train, and completing expense forms in the airport, on the phone, I suspect.

However, towards the end of this week, there was, fortunately, a bit of respite. As such I was able able to complete a few things that needed doing, including giving the RO-AR.com website a bit of a spruce up. It is a great feeling to have tasks ticked off, prepared and ready to take on a few new things next week.

Next week, of course, could be an important week for many in England. No I am not talking about the football, although I will be watching, but the impending relaxation of pandemic restrictions in England.

With fairly lax restrictions here already and increasing case numbers it seems strange to remove the few controls we do still have. Most people I spoke with this week have echoed the same sentiment, and experts did not hold their punches.

With a new variant (the Lambda variant from Peru) and what appears to be a continued poor understanding of exponential growth, this does seem to be increasing risk to overall health and certainly does not appear to follow the precautionary principle… (if you are wondered what happened to the ε, ζ, η, θ, ι, κ, variants btw, they do exist, they are on the WHO site).

However, with city centres and the economy struggling against multiple headwinds (including COVID & EU exit), together with the whopping cost for furlough payments I suspect (although not admitted) an economic decision has been made. Fingers crossed it does not go horribly wrong.

This makes the full and complete end of furlough and other support measures likely, all as part of this return to ‘normal’. With the economy, already riding a cresting wave, under all these support measures, their removal has every likelihood to be the trigger that causes everything to crash.

Collections volumes, which have been relatively benign for the last 9 months, as a result at likely to start seeing increasing pressures in more sectors. It is one to watch closely, the next few weeks and plan contingencies ahead of time.

This is where that extra time, doing admin tasks, and getting ready can pay dividends. Something to ponder over the weekend.

Other key stories

• 2.4m employees still furloughed after May re-opening
• IE HUB and Vulnerability Registration Service agree partnership
• AI is transforming the coding of computer programs
• Treasury wants us to ‘live with Covid’ – but what does that mean?
• Sainsbury’s warns of shortages due to Covid and recruitment issues
• Bank of England asks staff to come in once a week
• Second charge mortgage new business volumes grew by 293% in May 2021
• HMRC starts collecting tax debts again and warns customers not to ignore any communications
• Two thirds of financial services firms use alternative data for decision making
• ‘Idea of commuting fills me with dread’: workers on returning to the office