Home-Office in the Alps?

Last month, Spaceti closed a deal with our new Swiss partner, Inacta. We sat down with Daniel Rutishauser, Head of Blockchain Services and Head Financial Services at Inacta for a short interview. I asked him what he believes Switzerland is doing well. While he said that many of the companies are following the typical social distancing measures and flexible workplace guidelines, he told me three interesting anecdotes, two of which pertain to levels of CO2 in the atmosphere (directly correlating to the spreading of COVID-19), and one which is a new take on the idea of “home office.” Mr. Rutishauser said that:

Some companies try to get people back into the office using split teams, and social distancing measures. And some companies people just want to stay at home more, and so they try, for instance, to provide free food or after work training. Just to get the social life somehow back into the office. As a team, you grow together if you work together; we are human beings at the end. 

But this isn’t enough.

The people need to trust the measures. They need to trust that the air quality is good. Especially now it will be more wet seasons of the year; on average, we will have colds, there will be flu around. You need to kind of prove that the work conditions are good, and we are not yet there.

Classroom Experiment

About two weeks ago, a teacher went on a tv show and brought a device to measure the CO2 in the air with him and described an experiment they conducted in the classroom. In Switzerland, we usually have 45-minute classes. They started with all the windows closed, looked at the meter, and after ten minutes, the maximum threshold of CO2 allowed in the air was surpassed. So, they did another experiment. Let’s just half-open the windows, and like 20-25 minutes later, the threshold was reached. The only way the threshold was not reached during a 45-minute lesson was when they kept the windows open. But… winter is approaching, so it will be cold.

More clothes?

Similarly to the school, at the kindergarten, we were informed that we should give the kids more warm clothes that they can pull over because they basically keep the windows open. But that can’t be a real working condition, sitting at the desk working with the gloves. We need other measures.

Co-working space in the alps?

The already existing co-working spaces are being expanded. We also see on the periphery, in the villages, new co-working spaces are being established. We have the alps, the very beautiful alps; there’s one area called Engadin, it’s a high plateau, a very nice area, and there will be a new home office facility. They want to pull the people from the low ends up there just going skiing and work there in this new co-working facility. They call it home office but its co-working. Clearly it is a trend and the employers have to implement more flexible schemes.

Here’s a link if you want to book your workspace at Engadin St. Moritz for your vacation this year: https://www.coworkengadin.ch/