ANNUAL REPORT
Every time I come to Vår Gård I am amazed at how fantastic the reception is. It is not only the food, the fantastic surroundings and the atmosphere that I enjoy, but it is also a world-class customer meeting. A hello, a welcome, a smile or some warm small talk. The staff at Vår Gård truly lives our vision of the importance of The Good Meeting in all our activities.
I think personal encounters have become more important than ever this year. Because this fall, when I haven't met and talked to others on a daily basis, I've realized how much I really miss people.
How good it feels to look another person directly in the eye and not through a screen camera, to laugh and argue and be close to each other. To be able to touch and be touched. Simply by human presence.
At the same time, the corona pandemic has taught us to deal with a different everyday life in new ways, for better or worse. Digitalization has taken leaps and bounds, the need to travel far to meet has become less, and the line between home and away has blurred.
We have changed our behaviors in many ways and been forced to take actions we never even had to reflect on before. Because who would have even thought about having digital dinners in front of the screen or workshops in various digital break out rooms before the pandemic hit?
Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say, and just think of the many creative ways to socialize, work, and conduct business that have emerged this year. Not least here at Vår Gård.
“Necessity is the mother of invention”
When conference operations were cut back, they focused on private guests. When restaurant visits were prioritized, they focused on weekend shopping and takeout. When Christmas dinners in December became fewer, they focused on Christmas catering and home delivery dinners instead.
It became a flexible and necessary adaptation to a reality around us that has changed faster than perhaps ever before.
We will probably never return to a time when people see it as necessary to physically travel halfway around the globe to attend meetings and conferences, and I think that is fundamentally a positive consequence of the pandemic.
However, I believe that the need to be in the same room every now and then, and look each other in the eye again, will be more important and more longed for than ever when the pandemic finally gives way. Then places like Vår Gård will become even more important. I am really looking forward to that day.
I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and take care of yourselves!
Marie Nygren, CEO of the Swedish Cooperative Federation