When offices reopen and colleagues can go back to the office again. This will have a huge impact on the facilities considering all the health regulations. Firstly, there are consequences on the facilities due to the new regulations. The physical distancing between your colleagues requires physical distancing for the spatial dimensions as well. Desks need more space, meeting rooms can handle fewer people, and there are several consequences for the travelling lanes; elevators, and hallways. Furthermore, facilities require the right hygienic measures to avoid spreading. Altogether, this requires a thorough workplace re-entry strategy for the facilities teams to comply with the regulations.
However, there are many psychological consequences for your colleagues who use the facilities as well. During the past months, employees had to work from home or remotely. Whether they might have started to love or hate it. It is likely that they want to come to the office just for meetings and social interactions. While social distance regulations make space very limited for everyone in the organisation. Moreover, the beliefs of your colleagues might influence to what extent they want to comply with the governmental regulations. Therefore, it is crucial to gather as much information as possible regarding governmental regulations. Together with the preferences of your colleagues to reorganise the office effectively. In this whitepaper, we will give an outline to prepare effectively the office, and your colleagues for a workplace re-entry. This guide will help you to sustain the productivity of your organisation during these uncertain times.
The purpose of the office
Before starting to pull your desks 1.5 meters apart from each other. It might be good to re-think the purpose of your office. Before COVID-19 there was already a shift in the perception of the purpose of the workplace. Since the office should become rather a place for meeting and interacting with each other. We have learned that colleagues mostly miss social interaction when working from home. From our own global Habital® Remote research and the scientific articles that we have analysed.
