Future of Work: Work-Life Balance during and after a Pandemic

Dear Community,

We would like to invite you for our next meetup on July 7th! This will be a special one, as it is a result of two open communities for creative and future-thinking: Speculative Futures The Hague and Pop-Up Creativity Hub!

The current pandemic has a major impact on our lives and schedules. For over 3 months now, we’ve been Zooming, Skyping and Teaming for work meetings, online pubquizes and digital sport classes. We have grown accustomed to the working from home and remote-lifestyle by now. With the schools reopening and the bars serving again, many share a sigh of relief. Life is slowly getting back to normal!

But one thing that might silently become part of our new normal, is working from home. After all, large scale mobility and office work is not possible yet, and seems to be pushed somewhat to the end of the horizon. Although we have become fluent in ‘Can you hear me now?’ and all its variations, have we really become fluent in working from home?

Several companies have issued statements that they are so pleased with the shown productivity and efficiency during this pandemic, that they plan to take working from home as a standard for the long run. It saves office spaces, travel, energy… But it also lacks casual coffee chats, serendipitous encounters and of course the famous water cooler networking. Aside from the social aspect, there is another major concern with working from home: the blurring of the lines between Work and Home, better known as the Work-Life balance. How to maintain a healthy separation between these two when the physical separation of space is no longer there?

That is what we would like to explore with you in this very special meetup.

During this interactive workshop, we are looking forward to exploring potential effects and paths forward to make working from home a durable and healthy option, see the agenda below:

• 19h-19h20: Welcome and setting the scene (Speculative Futures The Hague)
• 19h15 - 20h20: Hands-on workshop: The Future of Work (wearereasonablepeople)
• 20h20- 20h30: Wrap up

Some brief introductions about the two parties behind this collaboration:

> Speculative Futures The Hague is part of a not-for-profit international meetup community steered by the Design Futures Initiative. In The Hague, we aim at providing a space for people with different backgrounds and disciplines to reflect on, discuss, and create views on the future(s) around a diversity of topics. Triggered by their enthusiasm for futures thinking, Anouk Geenen and Julieta Matos Castaño co-founded the Speculative Futures chapter in the Hague in 2019. Besides organizing this meetup community, Anouk and Julieta are colleagues at the DesignLab of the University of Twente where they do research on smart city futures.

> wearereasonablepeople is a digital agency located in the heart of Rotterdam. Following a human-centered approach, we help our clients identify, design and build digital innovations that suit their business and users needs. With experience in various fields ranging from transportation, to healthcare, to community, we help our clients answer their most critical business questions and we deliver the most impactful solutions through service design and strategy, IxD, UX and visual design, and technology development. Marta Axpe (Strategic Design Lead) and Jimena Garcia (Service Designer) will be taking part of the presentation and facilitating the interactive session.

Come join us on Tuesday evening July 7th, from 19.00-20.30h

See you then!

Note: For this online session we will use Zoom and www.miro.com boards. For a better experience, please join us from your computer and not using your phone or tablet.

The links are the following:
Miro board: https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_kqHAA24=/
Zoom call: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82327114274?pwd=c2Racko2VllmRENFVUtmc3pKZkVwQT09