Adapting your workspace for employees after COVID-19
With COVID-19 slowing down and the business community beginning talks of slowly re opening within the next few weeks, I have decided to write an article offering some advice on how to adapt your office space to best fit the current circumstances.
The whole working environment will adapt over the next few months as we slowly work our way into the “new normal” . However until this happens there are a few tools and products that will become “Must Haves & Do's” in every office. These will range from protective products , new space planning techniques and cleaning highly used areas on a more regular basis.
All the products, consultancy tools and practices below are available at Design Office Consultancy. Please do not hesitate to get in contact if you require anymore information.
Protective Screening
A product that the majority of furniture manufactures are now offering is the “Protective Screen”. Being renamed the sneeze, protect, bacteria screen... amongst other names, this product is simply a large transparent piece of easily wipeable acrylic, that can be manufactured to cover an employee on all sides on their working environment. This product is a highly effective way of decreasing the amount of saliva droplets crossing desk thresholds.
Modern workspaces on the whole are based on open plan designs, therefore it can be agreed that employers will be hesitant to be drawn back into the old modular desk design layout. As the protective screens are transparent (they can have a coloured film if required) they allow vision, light and all directions of sight to continue within the workspace, whilst also giving the employees a comfortable amount of protection.
I would highly recommend these for all offices with a high density of employees (i.e: call centres) and any business that can’t promote the use remote working (retail shops, manufacturing industries)
Social Distancing Desking
The theory suggests that every other desk should be made free (based on 1400 wide desk, which are the most common in UK offices) with the opposite desk to an employee also being empty. Combining this with protective screening, employee spacing will be 1) meeting government guidelines & 2) providing ampul protection for the work force.
Throughout the business world, especially the UK, the majority of desk design is styled on “Bench Desking”. So the practice of freeing up every other desk in practice could be easily done. However the problem is where do the employees of those desks go ? If you are lucky like some of our customers you may have a spare floor in which you could create a new office on to spread your employees over. Your business may have use of a disaster recovery centre, which again you could split your employees over. However for the vast majority of businesses who don’t have spare space, they will need to use space planning to redesign work spaces in the most efficient way possible.
I would suggest that the theory of social distance desking should be applied where it is possible. The most effective way to achieve this is to combine the use of office space planing with remote working, keeping the number of employees in the workspace at a safe limit (this limit will be different for every office)
COVID -19 Spaceplanning
The footprints of offices will have to change due to COVID - 19. Distance guidelines, one way stairs and specific direction walk ways are just a few of the regulations that will enter the workplace. You may have seen this being introduced into supermarkets throughout the passed few weeks. The direction, flow and placement of employees within a space is now a pivotal part of keeping your working environment safe.
The easiest way to do this is to have a professional spend a day space planning your work space. You may already have a CAD document that you received with your original layouts, if so that makes it even easier. Via CAD the space can be manipulated to show the most effective and safest position of furniture and workflows throughout a workspace. Implemented correctly and governed strictly this could give your office the edge when looking for the combination of efficiency and employee protection.
Limit the surfaces Employees can touch
According to the WHO, along side bacterial droplets a high % of COVID-19 is spread through the touching of contaminated materials. To combat this within workspaces, office design has to look at areas such as switches, door handles, lockers and all other areas that an employee can touch, with the aim of mitigating the issue.
Just a few examples
- An easy idea focusing on lighting would be to swap your light switches for motion detecting lighting. This would eliminate the need for employees to use light switches and it may also make your office more energy efficient.
- Offices that don’t use automatic doors (a highly touched area) may want to look at introducing kick plates on the push doors or installing an automatic system.
- If your workforce use lockers, it would be beneficial to change current key and code locks for a more modern touch less fobs. This again reducing the need to touch potentially contaminated objects.
- If it is impossible to no not touch a certain object, changing the material of that object is also a very good idea. Materials such as Brass & Copper have a composition that viruses and bacteria cannot survive on.
Cleaning Highly used areas
It goes without saying that the best way to get rid of any contamination is to clean the surface that it is on. And if you are Donald Trump you would also tell a nation to inject themselves with beach (Please don’t do this)
It can be said that most office environments are already very good at this. However they usually concentrate of flat surfaces, keyboards and bins. The cleaning process of offices needs to become a lot more thorough. For example highly used areas such as operators chairs and soft seating in communal need to be cleaned on a more regular basis. Each office is different, but you will need to sit down and list all the areas that your employees touch and have these cleaned on a regular basis. Not only will this keep your workspaces safe and clean, you will also increase the linespace on the items that you are cleaning.
MS Group
5yGood article James, very good indeed, we are all going to be looking at a much changed workplace environment when we get back. The phrase “new normal” is already driving me mad.......should change its name to “old hat” as there seems to be old ideas and product re-surfacing. We are working on ideas and products to that will hopefully fit in to the return to work and ease the anxiousity of returning staff. Catch you soon. Stay safe and keep indoors.
Owner & Managing Director of Design Office Consultancy Ltd
5yGreat article James