The Post-Pandemic Office as a Place of Inspirational Encounter

Now that we have experienced that knowledge-work can be done anywhere, our offices hopefully evolve into creative places for inspiring encounters between people.

In the short term, the Corona pandemic has given the workplace a powerful shake-up. The exciting question now, in this final phase of the pandemic, is whether this stimulus was sufficient to revolutionize or at least renovate the world of work also in the long term. What will remain of remote work and home office when we have learned to live with this virus as we do with others? Will we then simply return to the status quo and our pre-pandemic open-plan offices? And why should we actually do that?

Many knowledge workers now know both extremes of a spectrum on which we now have to look for possible solutions. Before Corona, “real” work only took place in the office, while home office was the tolerated exception for employees without career ambitions. Working at home was always a bit disreputable and suspicious back then. For the past year and a half, most knowledge workers now work primarily in their home office or even just somewhere. It works surprisingly well for many, depending on their life phase and living situation.