A few months ago – but it feels a lot longer – I visited the European headquarters of Steelcase, the office furniture designers, in Munich. In their (of course) beautifully appointed building, their senior vice president, Guillaume Alvarez, told me how important it was to create workplaces that people wanted to turn up to, especially in cities where housing costs were high. “An office is not a factory,” he told me. “You mustn’t kill the human interaction. You lose so much when people don’t get together.”
And he added – although it didn’t seem so significant at the time – “there is very little small talk in video conferencing”.