The Covid-19 pandemic, which forced major changes to working life, is the reason why Lund University chose this year to initiate work on the Workplace of the Future. Earlier in the autumn, vice-chancellor Erik Renström observed in his blog:

“The Workplace of the Future will be a hybrid of what we missed during the pandemic and our newly acquired lessons on alternative ways of conducting our work.”

The project aims to identify and prioritise the areas in which the University needs to work to develop a sustainable and hybrid workplace.

“There are three different parts to the project”, says Cecilia Billgren, project manager for the Workplace of the Future.

“One part focuses on the hybrid workplace; through interviews with groups and individuals, we gather experiences from the return to a more hybrid workplace with increased remote working after the pandemic. Here the focus is on technical and administrative staff and managers”, explains Cecilia.

The second part of the project, an attractive and sustainable workplace for the long term, will involve a number of workshops with staff and students to find out what they think is important to make LU an attractive and sustainable workplace in the future.

The third part of the project consists of knowledge acquisition. Throughout the course of the project, the project group will gather and compile information that is relevant to work on the Workplace of the Future. This could include work environment-related research on how other higher education institutions apply hybrid working methods. The final delivery from the project will be two reports to the University management.

“Our findings are to provide additional knowledge to the management, which could form the basis for choices and decisions on matters connected to making LU into a sustainable and hybrid workplace”, says Cecilia Billgren, adding:

“The project work is also to result in a more cohesive picture of what is encompassed by the concept of a sustainable and hybrid workplace, and of how LU currently works on these issues. Hopefully, it will also make us better prepared for future needs and opportunities!”

If you would like to share something which could be useful to work on the Future Workplace you are most welcome to contact project manager Cecilia Billgren: cecilia [dot] billgren [at] rektor [dot] lu [dot] se.