social distancing Archives • Stone Soup Coworking Space

Coworking with safety at Stone Soup

We are in a fortunate situation compared to other busier coworking spaces and office environments. The number of people who use our space at any given time is usually quite low compared to the size of our workspace. That makes it possible to implement social distancing within our work environment.

However, for extra safety, we will not allow member drop-ins. We will also rearrange some of Stone Soup spaces to enable distancing ourselves (meeting rooms, kitchen) and we have installed additional disinfectants for members to use.

Some new rules will apply to make our workspace a safe environment to work at. Can we change alone or do we need the help of our members?

We are all in this together: let’s maintain the space clean

Help us keep our community safe and protected by implementing physical distancing measures and enhanced hygiene practices! We would also like to draw your attention to areas of high traffic, where lots of people engage with the same items and surfaces. Let’s be aware and protect ourselves from those areas!

Door handles: They are one of the most touched spots in the office. Use some tissue, your elbows or your hand within a sleeve to open the door. Before getting back to work, use anti-bacterial gel – especially if you’re about to eat.

Desks: Use one desk and don’t swipe seats in the coworking space. Please don’t share desk equipment and clean your phone, pens and your bag at least once per day.

Toilets: Always wash your hands after using the toilet and try not to touch the faucet or door handle on your way out.

Meeting rooms: We will reserve the meeting rooms for single-person use for virtual meetings, phone calls etc. We will charge no additional fees.

We will focus on providing a safe environment for our members and we hope that we will see you all coming back in the next weeks! If for some reason you think that continuing working from home suits you best don’t worry! Our COVID-19 mission is alive: to ensure that all our members can remain connected to their community, no matter the distance. We will continue the Virtual Coworking and you will still be able to interact with our members!

Safety rules for the protection of our coworking space

Here is a list summing up all our protective measures for how to maintain the coworking space safe and clean.

Keeping enough space between you and other people
If you can reach out and touch someone from your workstation, then your office isn’t set up for physical distancing.
Spray and wipe down your workspace before and after you use it.
Please use one desk and don’t swipe seats in the coworking space. Don’t share desk equipment and clean your phone, pens and your bag at least once per day.
Promote fresh airflow throughout the office
Open the windows and doors for at least 15mins, several times a day.
Consider taking all meetings online.
We will reserve the meeting rooms for single-person use for virtual meetings, phone calls etc. We will charge no additional fees.
Rearrange your private office plan.
Separate desks and give each member of your team their private space.
As you work, make sure you regularly wash your hands.
Door handles are one of the most touched spots in the office. Use some tissue, your elbows or your hand within a sleeve to open the door. Before getting back to work, use anti-bacterial gel – especially if you’re about to eat.
Limited use of the kitchen.
Minimize the use of the fridge. Use disposable cutlery and keep your own office mug which you will clean at the end of the day.

COVID-19 lockdown has forced the majority of the workforce worldwide to work from home. Lyda Michopoulou is a freelancer and a member of Stone Soup coworking space. She has worked remotely since January of 2017, and she has long experience in distributed work. One could argue that being a remote worker, Lyda would have an advantage over other workers who were abruptly forced to change their routines. But let’s see to what extent this is true.

Lyda will help us answer the question, whether working from home is the same as working remotely. She will also share her own experience.

Adopting a work from home routine and how is that different?

Lyda considers herself lucky as she didn’t struggle much during this transition. Her life as a freelancer requires her to travel around Europe and work from different countries. One of Lyda’s consulting gigs is to an American startup in the travel industry called NextVacay. She is working on US time, following a specific time frame and specific online tools. For that reason, the processes and dynamics within the organization haven’t changed much with the lockdown.

Because of the corona crisis, Lyda is telecommuting from home and she spends most of her time hosting or participating in online meetings. This has decreased her actual working time and disrupted her usual working routine from Stone Soup.

Lyda had a functional working routine for herself, allowing her to work from anywhere as long as the WiFi connection was strong.

However, working from home is completely different from working from “anywhere in the world”. Social distancing, the new norm that has been given to all of us, is hardly a gift. Being able to keep a working pace, your motivation high and your productivity under control can be compromised especially when you are forced to work without a suitable working environment.
It is quite easy to fall into traps such as working all day long, without proper breaks or even realizing that your working time is up and you should relax. Lyda sees the value of participating in virtual coworking spaces such as Stone Soup’s and Digital Nomad Girls’ Inner Circle, in finding a sense of belonging and support.

How to do your best during the COVID-19 era?

Instead of isolating yourself at home binge watching TV-series and movies, you have the opportunity to do something to better your skills and develop yourself. You can host or join online meetings with friends (networking), figure out how to support others with the skills you already possess or participate in activities that are valuable for the community.

During the previous weekend, Lyda participated in an online hackathon, called: “Hack the Crisis Austria”. She mentored a team who was tackling a challenge: “How can we support the mental health of people”. Lyda has only positive feedback to give about it. It made her more eager to participate in a bigger scale and even think about organizing something similar in Greece.

Shaping the future of remote work after coronavirus

The corona crisis has unprecedentedly escalated the need to work remotely. The situation might be temporary but it pushes the gears of change and those won’t come back. Companies keeping previously a negative pose to the idea, are forced tο consider continuing with remote work after the lockdown.

Having a global network of contacts, Lyda has heard discussions about the struggles of friends and partners and has acquired some interesting insights. Many companies don’t understand how to use the online world to better support their work. There was no time for guidelines and transitioning. A new culture and priorities need to be set on the go. And of course, this changes the balances and threatens the up to now acquired stability. Companies and teams are being troubled by basic aspects of functionality such as what would be the best way, time, frequency, and means to conduct online meetings.

The discussion moved from online meetings to how people handle the grief that comes with being locked inside their houses. Lyda’s perspective of the situation was altered due to an article on Harvard Business Review. If individuals and companies go through the stages of grief we will be ready to accept what lies ahead and work with that.

After the lockdown is over a changed situation and land of opportunities for digital nomads and remote work is to be expected. The ground will be paved for the companies to keep workers distributed. And they would most probably like to shape their businesses in a way they could cope with similar future situations.