Social distancing has been proven as the best universal solution to avoiding COVID-19 contamination between individuals. Then why this solution does not solve the COVID-19 challenge at our workplaces? I will list below reasons for this and then provide four methods to prevent contamination that should be implemented in conjunction with social distancing to get the optimal result.

Top reasons why Social Distancing alone does not work at offices:

• Capacity challenge: While 2m (6 feet) is the commonly recommended minimum distance, studies indicate that airborne particles with COVID-19 can travel at least 4m (13feet). With 4m safety distance in open office layout, only 1/5 desks can be used safely.

• Airborne time of particles: Even if you keep social distance, a single sneeze can formulate a cloud that stays airborne up to 3 hours, according to an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine. If people move around the office, they can move through areas with airborne particles, regardless of social distancing.

• People share desks & spaces: Even through physical separation between employees would happen, individuals can use same the same desk or phone booths after each other canceling the effects of physical separation. One sneeze in a phone booth without a cool off time or cleaning will cancel all benefits of social distancing.

Top 5 steps to help employees return to the workplace during COVID-19

1. Work remotely as much as possible - consider distributed workspace model

Even though working remotely falls under social distancing, I wanted to make it a separate line item. The reason for that is that social distancing is typically a safety measure that people take when they meet each other or share a common space like, let's say an office. Working remote falls under the category of social isolation when considering it from the point of an individual employee and their colleagues.

By far, the best way of reducing the risk of mass contamination within your employees, people need to minimize the time they spend at the same office. This does not necessarily mean that people need to work from home, consider instead offering distributed office as an option for your employees. In a distributed workspace model, your employees can work in office spaces that are not limited to your corporate office.

Benefits of working in a distributed workspace:

Shorter commute 🚗🚌

Less noise 🙉 & disturbances 🙊 than large office environment with a lot of familiar colleagues

An office like environment 🖨 and services ☕ allowing the best possible concentration level

Face 😃 to face 😆 collaboration which is very difficult when remotely working from home

2. Office capacity management - Visualize office occupancy

When you find yourself in a situation where you need to visit the office, do it when there are the least possible amount of people present. Modern smart office solutions can help employees see in real-time what is the general occupancy status at the office, with more advanced solutions down to the individual seats. Consider also how you can share information who is at the office as face to face collaboration with specific colleague can be the very reason to go to the office. Opt-in location sharing between colleagues is a great, low effort way of increasing transparency between employees, making collaboration easier and safer during these difficult times.

Create company policy about office capacity; Set limits how many people can be at the office at the same time. Enforcing this again requires that you are able to visualise to people how many seats and places there are available at the office.

In summary, ultimately, you want to have:

• Online occupancy visualization available to all workspace users

• Desk booking to enforce space capacity limitations

• Colleague finder/ location sharing between employees

3. Don’t share resources between individuals

Surface cleaning is essential, but at a busy office, it is practically impossible to avoid using a desk that others have been using the same day unless you have some Superman vision that can spot viruses. Occupancy sensors, a relatively common tool for facility managers that try to understand how the office is used, can be used to show employees which desks and spaces are clean.

What you need:

• Office floorplan to visualize the desk and space cleanliness

• Tools for cleaning crew to mark which spaces have been cleaned. A simple web interface for a tablet demonstrated below:

4. Work in groups with dedicated areas for each group

This step applies to corporations with hundreds or more employees as to make this step work, you need also to have a large enough premise which multiple floors or wings so that separating it to independent areas can be done in practice without barricades and barbwire which ruin any office’s Feng shui.

The key thing for the success of these steps is how easy you make for people to follow and remember the areas they are allowed in. The best and simplest way to do this is to include them in your office floor plan you already use to communicate your (#2) office occupancy and (#3) desk cleanliness.

5. Social distancing - An excellent addition, done right

Social distancing in an office is difficult to monitor as people are not just sitting at their desks but moving around the office. If you have done steps #1-#4, you should not have so many people at the office to prevent social distancing from being possible. We believe your employees can keep 2m or 6ft separation the same way as they are already doing when queuing in a shop or sitting on a bus. Creating alarms when two people come within 2 meters is not going to help people, but instead, create additional disturbances during the day.

Instead, what people cannot easily do and monitor, is avoiding overcrowding spaces like meeting rooms or co-working areas. Set maximum capacity of spaces to a low value and have alarms for people who are exceeding those thresholds will help your employees distribute themselves at the office more evenly to avoid unnecessary sharing of “airspace.”

Summary

With these five steps, you support your staff and relieve their anxiety in their return to the office. The tools and methods used in this blog post are features of the Steerpath Smart Office solution. Click below to hear more about the solution and how it can help your organization.