6 Feet + the New Office
As business prepare to reopen, they will have to take new health and safety guidelines and requirements into account. As these rules will grow and update as we learn more about COVID-19, we hope to provide solutions that will greatly help the office in the short term, in reopening, as well as the long term for continually operating a healthy workplace environment.
Social and physical distancing is proving one of our greatest tools for preventing transmission, but there are shortcomings in typical office design that can prevent staff from utilizing this technique properly. Along with reviewing office layouts and identifying potential areas of transmission, we can help create new layouts that prioritize distancing and flexibility to suite your unique workflow. Per the Center for Disease Control and Prevention CDC, we should keep this distance to 6 feet as a minimum.
Each business will have to find a balance between how employees work and connect can be a challenge as more staff will be working off-site or from home now more than ever. One useful example is, by providing smaller meeting spaces throughout an office, it can provide on-site employees with a safe space to connect with clients and those working from home without putting additional people at risk. Establishing good lines of communication between employees will not only allow work to continue as efficiently as possible but will help maintain collaboration and community within the workplace.
Although the increasingly popular Open Office plan can attribute to spread of illnesses, it can be a great tool in reducing transmission. An Open Office’s flexibility will be key to allowing staff to distance safely while also allowing us to identify high traffic areas that require additional health and safety measure. The large mix of open and closed spaces in contemporary Open Offices can be further divided, rearranged, and controlled for a more efficient use of space that may not be possible in denser offices.
Along with identifying ‘hot zones’ in the office, preventative measures like wayfinding will be import to educating staff how to occupy the office in a manner that is both safe and effective. Signage such as those explaining new protocols for distancing and disinfecting throughout the office will also prove useful.
Along with revised these sanitizing protocols, additional thought should go into the surfaces that are in your worksites. By selecting appropriate finishes (water-repellent, non-porous, self-cleaning, etc.) for appliances, workstations, hardware, and general surfaces throughout the office, businesses can create workplace that can be easily disinfected further reducing potential transmissions.
By enacting many of these solutions, business will be able to open with a greater peace of mind and will can maintain these established protocols to handle future event that may arise. As our recommendations are advisory and intended to assist reopening business we highly recommend you regularly refer to new guidelines and recommendations from WHO, CDC, OSHA, as well as your Local, State, and Federal Governments. Going forward we will continue to collect and provide additional information as guidelines are continuously evolving, you can find our updates our compiled here.