The corona crisis has turned our everyday life on its head and life in a state of emergency is different for all of us. For some of us it is a question of sustaining, for others a time of development. We pay a visit to ten of our colleagues, each of whom share a little of their new working day.

2020.04.01 | Health Kommunikation

HR Partner Pia Lind Lunau Kristensen's body is beginning to assume the shape of the dining room chair that she spends most of her day sitting on as she resolves many of the HR questions that come with the corona virus. Fortunately, the HR department's joint Skype gymnastics break helps with the dining chair body, but the physical separation from colleagues and 'customers' makes work difficult – especially the personnel cases, sickness absence interviews and salary negotiations. The kitchen is the quiet place for working. Almost too quiet.

PhD Administrator Bente Pedersen is getting tired of the many hours spent sitting at the dining room table. One thing her corona isolation has revealed is that it is time to finally retire the inherited dining room furniture from 1964 – permanently. She misses the day-to-day sparring with her colleagues, but also enjoys that things are beginning to calm down here in week three. So now she has the chance to find a new and better way to organise her mailbox – something she has often thought about doing but never spent time on.    

 

Associate Professor Christina C. Dahm from the Department of Public Health is challenged by a lack of time for in-depth study and by the failure of her ambitions to match her productivity. With the children at home, work has been broken up into smaller sections, where she and her husband take turns working in the home office in the bedroom. She does not have much lecturing this semester, so her focus is on her tasks as degree programme director and on supervision which continues as normal, just on Skype. 

 

Is Associate Professor Louise Hauge Matzen’s (DENT) workplace always so tidy? Yes it is, because untidiness gets in the way. From one day to the next, she reorganised all of her theoretical teaching on the dentistry degree programme so it is now distance learning – and with a positive response from the students. The clinical teaching after Easter is a tougher nut to crack. Today, it is her turn to take the not so good workplace at the kitchen table, where – despite the circumstances – work and everyday life function okay.

She misses the students; Professor and Consultant at the Department of Hepatology and Gastroenterology Lene Hjerrild Iversen. Nevertheless, she was surprised and encouraged when she recently streamed her first symposium on colorectal cancer for one hundred eighth semester students from the Master's degree programme in medicine. The technology worked, the students were really ready for some teaching and used the chat energetically, the breaks with time to work alone also worked in cyberspace, and the symposium concluded with some thankful messages. But as Lene also notes: After three hours without a break, I was pretty much done. And frankly, I'd much rather see and experience the students in real life!    

Even though his own tasks are very similar to his normal work, IT Supporter Max Slott Madsen is impressed with the way in which the use of e.g. Zoom, Skype and Teams has been jump-started across the whole faculty. The transition to working from home has been painless. His home near Skanderborg already contained a well-equipped workstation with an adjustable height desk and an office chair that is actually better than the one in the office. When the home office outside Skanderborg is closed, Max spends the sunny days on his mountain bike in the woods.    

 

Normally, it is his colleagues in the laboratory at forensic chemistry that Tore Forsingdal Hardlei chats to. Instead, it is now his daughter Sara who is doing her homework while Tore Forsingdal Hardlei downloads analysis results over his telephone and writes statements for the police to use when investigating cases in which drugs, alcohol and illicit substances play a role. For as long as the corona virus dictates things, Tore Forsingdal Hardlei switches between a week at the laboratory at the Department of Forensic Medicine and a week working from home. 

One thing that Adviser Henriette Noe from HE Studies Administration really misses is being able to drop in on her colleagues down the hall as she navigates her way through all the decisions being made in the educational area these days. She has the task of communicating the decisions to the students, and she has never had so many telephone conversations with students as now. Fortunately, they are really good at taking the situation into account. And breaks? They are usually spent on daily outdoor fitness with the children.    

In a small apartment, the living room has been turned into an office and the dining table is now a permanent workstation. But the collegiality is missing at home with Project Finance Administrator Martin Gissel Jensen. He misses his colleagues. Especially being in a social community – the professional aspects are easier to take care of via Skype. He tries to follow a fairly normal working day, and his work tasks are also largely the same, though there are times when things a very quiet. Martin makes the best of the situation, but it really is not fun anymore and he's looking forward to returning to normal.    

PhD student Pia Johansson Heinsvig was forced to cut short her research stay in Australia and return home early due to the corona crisis. Now she has taken over her husband’s gaming table and chair, and from here she has early morning Skype and Zoom contact with her colleagues down under, so she can complete her research stay in the best possible way. She has managed to find room for all the screens, so now it is just a question coordination, as she puts it, as to when it’s time to work and when it’s time for gaming. But the cat, Curie, is always allowed to hang out on the table.