{"id":16269,"date":"2020-06-04T16:16:06","date_gmt":"2020-06-04T16:16:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/home-alone-in-the-office\/"},"modified":"2020-06-08T09:03:41","modified_gmt":"2020-06-08T09:03:41","slug":"home-alone-in-the-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/home-alone-in-the-office\/","title":{"rendered":"Home alone in the office"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

03.06.2020 |<\/p>

Home alone in the office<\/strong><\/h1>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

The coronavirus pandemic has unleashed a home working revolution. But it\u2019s too early to speak of the death of the office. Humans are social beings who need to work in offices and communicate in person. We can\u2019t work alone at home forever. After the lockdown we now have to find the right balance.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Happy are those who can work at home \u2013 really work \u2013 during the coronavirus crisis. I\u2019m not one of them. I like to be able to concentrate and work in peace and quiet. With school-age kids running around that\u2019s a physical impossibility. I\u2019ve tried, so I know what I\u2019m talking about.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019m certainly not the only one with the same problem. In a Link survey in April, 58 per cent of Swiss people said they were working from home. That\u2019s twice as many as the previous month. How can they concentrate? Are they as productive at home as in the office, or do they get distracted? It would be interesting to know how productivity has fared in flats repurposed into offices.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not certain to what extent we\u2019ll be working from home in a few years\u2019 time. It\u2019s still too early to make predictions. The pandemic could end up driving new concepts of space that enable people to manage their work and family better under one roof. But we\u2019re not there yet.<\/p>\n

Taking refuge in the office
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m fortunate to be able to decide myself where I work. Between all the conference calls, cooking and answering my kids\u2019 questions at home, it\u2019s liberating to be able to take refuge in the office. It\u2019s only a 15-minute walk from my home. There \u2013 always maintaining the appropriate social distance \u2013 I get to enjoy the calm of the parallel universe of the office. It\u2019s wonderful. Sometimes. The thing is, in the last few weeks I\u2019ve often been the only person in the office for days at a time. At some point, that got to be too much for a lonesome PR consultant in an open-plan office.<\/p>\n

Online encounters with clients and colleagues just about kept me going as a social, working being. At first, thanks to Zoom, I enjoyed getting to see how my colleagues lived. But from the third week of the lockdown, I started to find these video calls, where the heads of my business partners and co-workers are closer than in any real-life meeting, increasingly bleak. I started pining for encounters with people in the flesh.<\/p>\n

What I didn\u2019t knead to see
\n<\/strong>When things are all on screen, interpersonal communication suffers. I like to be able to gauge the facial expressions, posture and pitch of voice of the person I\u2019m communicating with. It gives me pointers that help me assess the situation correctly. Collaboration is based on mutual trust, and not just in the communications industry. No video meeting can reproduce the effect of that chemistry between people. Instead, completely irrelevant images from our virtual meetings stay stuck in my brain. For example, in one Zoom meeting, the partner of one of the dozen people attending was kneading dough in the background. Okay, so there could have been much more absurd things going on in the background, but don\u2019t ask me what was said in the meeting. I can\u2019t remember. But what I can recall, any time I like, is the sight of that person kneading bread.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

The office is not yet dead
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many people have had their daily working routine turned upside-down and have had to get used to new ways of working. What the pandemic has shown us is that working from home is manageable in most businesses. At the moment, all our employees here at open up can decide for themselves whether they want to work in the office or from home. We\u2019re aiming for a normal situation, with people working at least three days a week in the office, by the beginning of July. Naturally I\u2019ll be spending most of my time in the office \u2013 although two half-days a week I\u2019ll be working from home, as I have been up to now.<\/p>\n

With the easing of the lockdown, a modicum of normality has returned. But some things are here to stay. Virtual meetings, where they weren\u2019t already used before the pandemic, will be a matter of course in the new normal. At the same time, people will value personal exchange with customers, business partners and colleagues more highly.<\/p>\n

Today there were three of us at the office. I\u2019m looking forward to soon being able to brainstorm and get inspired with more co-workers over coffee in the kitchen or on the balcony. And after weeks of lockdown I\u2019ll be encouraging clients to drop by again for a real, in-the-flesh encounter.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Author
\n<\/strong>Every time he bakes a loaf, Philippe Welti can\u2019t help thinking about the man in the Zoom meeting.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
    <\/ul>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
    \n\t\t\t\t\t\t
    \n\t\t\t\t\t
    \n\t\t\t
    \n\t\t\t\t\t\t
    \n\t\t\t\t
    \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
    \n\t\t\t
    <\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Despite the home office revolution of recent weeks, it\u2019s too early to speak of the death of the of-fice. In the long run, humans are social beings who need personal contact. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":16242,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_header_footer","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-views"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHome alone in the office - open up<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Despite the home office revolution of recent weeks, it\u2019s too early to speak of the death of the of-fice. In the long run, humans are social beings who need personal contact.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/home-alone-in-the-office\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Home alone in the office - open up\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Despite the home office revolution of recent weeks, it\u2019s too early to speak of the death of the of-fice. In the long run, humans are social beings who need personal contact.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/home-alone-in-the-office\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"open up\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-06-04T16:16:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-06-08T09:03:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/headerbild-pw-1024x683.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"683\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"open up redaktor\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"open up redaktor\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Home alone in the office - open up","description":"Despite the home office revolution of recent weeks, it\u2019s too early to speak of the death of the of-fice. In the long run, humans are social beings who need personal contact.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/home-alone-in-the-office\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Home alone in the office - open up","og_description":"Despite the home office revolution of recent weeks, it\u2019s too early to speak of the death of the of-fice. In the long run, humans are social beings who need personal contact.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/home-alone-in-the-office\/","og_site_name":"open up","article_published_time":"2020-06-04T16:16:06+00:00","article_modified_time":"2020-06-08T09:03:41+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1024,"height":683,"url":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/headerbild-pw-1024x683.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"open up redaktor","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"open up redaktor","Est. reading time":"4 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/home-alone-in-the-office\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/home-alone-in-the-office\/"},"author":{"name":"open up redaktor","@id":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/91cebb94e3a22b2f5b0df4707bfe471c"},"headline":"Home alone in the office","datePublished":"2020-06-04T16:16:06+00:00","dateModified":"2020-06-08T09:03:41+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/home-alone-in-the-office\/"},"wordCount":842,"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/home-alone-in-the-office\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/headerbild-pw.jpg","articleSection":["Views"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/home-alone-in-the-office\/","url":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/home-alone-in-the-office\/","name":"Home alone in the office - open up","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/home-alone-in-the-office\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/home-alone-in-the-office\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/headerbild-pw.jpg","datePublished":"2020-06-04T16:16:06+00:00","dateModified":"2020-06-08T09:03:41+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/91cebb94e3a22b2f5b0df4707bfe471c"},"description":"Despite the home office revolution of recent weeks, it\u2019s too early to speak of the death of the of-fice. In the long run, humans are social beings who need personal contact.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/home-alone-in-the-office\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/home-alone-in-the-office\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/home-alone-in-the-office\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/headerbild-pw.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/headerbild-pw.jpg","width":5387,"height":3591},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/home-alone-in-the-office\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Home alone in the office"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/","name":"open up","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/91cebb94e3a22b2f5b0df4707bfe471c","name":"open up redaktor","url":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/author\/open-up-redaktor\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16269"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16409,"href":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16269\/revisions\/16409"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open-up.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}