After around a year and a half of facilitating connections at ETH, LunchLottery will be held for the last time in June. The programme showed that the desire of the ETH community to make connections with different parts of the university still persisted strongly throughout the pandemic.
In December 2020 – in the middle of the pandemic – ETH Zurich launched the LunchLottery programme. Twice a month, an external events platform held a drawing and matched three ETH community members together for a shared virtual coffee or lunch appointment. The aim was to give ETH employees the opportunity to connect with different teams and to continue expanding their networks at the university despite working from home under coronavirus restrictions.
Strengthening the feeling of community
The LunchLottery pilot phase was initially set to last three months. But the pandemic dragged on, and LunchLottery grew in popularity as the need for people to make connections remained strong. “LunchLottery was an important tool for strengthening the feeling of community at ETH over the past year and a half,” says Dr. Julia Dannath, the Vice President for Personnel Development and Leadership. “The pandemic really demanded a lot from us, both personally and professionally. So it was really important to offer our staff the chance to easily connect with each other and be able to meet other people despite the work-from-home requirement.”
Meeting online and off
Fortunately, the corona situation has now cooled down. Pandemic restrictions have been lifted, and most ETH employees are working on site, at least for a few days per week. It’s now once again possible to meet people in person for coffee or lunch or to engage in networking at events, drinks receptions or chance meetings with colleagues.
This is why the last round of the LunchLottery will take place in June. “Of course, this doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be any more lunch meetings from now on,” explains Dannath. “We encourage everyone at ETH to continue making connections outside of their teams just like with the LunchLottery. Now that we can meet physically again, it might be a nice idea to meet in person with LunchLottery contacts who you’ve so far only seen on screen. The desire of the ETH community to meet and connect has recently grown stronger.”
New events being planned
The invitation to the last ETH LunchLottery will be sent on 16 June, and the drawing will be held on 20 June. ETH still offers other options for social interaction, health and wellbeing. The Vice ?President’s Office for Personnel Development and Leadership (VPPL) hosts a lunch event on health issues twice per year. The last one took place in early April and was called “Sleep as a success factor”. Further events of this kind are scheduled and will be announced in an internal news article and on Staffnet. You can find more information about regularly scheduled events at: Mental health at ETH Zurich
“We’d like to thank everyone who took part in LunchLottery over the past 18 months. I also participated and very much value the contacts that it allowed me to make,” says Dannath.
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