COVID-19 is not an experiment how to work from home.

We’re done working from home and we miss the office. And because we also don’t know how long it will all last, we notice that more and more people are suffering from stress and tension. Despite all the good tips around working from home. When I read all the media like this, it seems like we are engaged in a big home-working experiment. But we are not! We are trying to cope with a pandemic and in doing so we are trying to work from home as best we can. Please note: I am a huge advocate of working from home and have been trying to help many organizations implement working from home since 2004, which for me is about working in freedom and with responsibility. And by giving confidence to all employees. However, we are now in a different situation. We have to work from home because we want to eliminate COVID-19 together, and we do that together. Making beautiful creative plans on your own doesn’t work if you used to do it with colleagues. So don’t try to cram it into a zoom or team calls. Leading remotely can be done, but some things can’t. So maybe still schedule an occasional walk with your co-worker? And having meetings all day, something many of us in the office wouldn’t turn our hand to, turns out to be really too exhausting via Zoom or teams. So work differently. And then above all, let’s accept that scheduling our day differently or doing certain tasks differently doesn’t mean you’re not working hard enough or being productive. Look at what you can do and what you can do differently. Perhaps it can even improve or renew your work. No old wine in new bags. But other skills to cope with this pandemic and meanwhile also try to still make something of your work. I no longer call it working from home, but pandemic work. #humanandtech