All sorts of office employers are now strategizing their returns to the workplace. This is prompting a wave of technological adaptations, from touchless technologies to tenant experience platforms, notification systems for cleaning crews and beyond. The goal is to keep people safe and productive at the same time. The longer people stay working from home, the more jarring the transition back to the office will be. Workers who are finally in the groove of things at home will soon find themselves thrust back into the workplace, only with the added risk of a virus that has no vaccine or truly effective treatment regime.
Under pressure
Private employers may be feeling the squeeze, but government employees are largely in the same boat, too. Planners responsible for the U.S. General Services Administration’s 370 million square feet of office space are considering how best to bring their employees back to the office, and since the agencies under the administration include a lot of open-plan space, particular considerations are being made to ensure safety.
The nuclear option
Open offices may be unfairly maligned in general, but their lack of barriers and partitions make them particularly risky for disease transmission. With that in mind, the GSA is going all-in on safety, ensuring that each open-plan seat is only used once a week. This could reduce the chance of the next desk user catching something from the previous one, but since the virus can spread via airborne droplets, even this seemingly over-the-top solution may not be enough.