I know it is tough for you even to imagine what’s coming next as most of us might be reading this during the quarantine, sitting back on our comfy couches along with the hot & cold beverages and those packs of namkeens on the table. However, we’re here to wake you up with the fact that this is not the ultimatum. All of us have to get back into our office-working lives one day. COVID-19 might not be eradicated, and not everybody will grow immune to it. But the working population of the country will have to go to their desks and work, as expected. In this blog, we will be answering the question- ” how will the work.. work?’
This is a question that commercial real estate companies in China have been answering and in the last few months, around 10,000 firms in China have turned millions of people back to work. Using the data and learnings gathered in China, data from WHO, & medical professionals, these firms harbored a new concept inside its headquarters and named the Six Feet Office. There are initiatives by companies which introduce redesigned office spaces to promote hygiene & stricter social distancing. The fundamental axiom is to adhere to the 6 feet distance, which is prescribed for sustained social distancing. It ensures that 2-meter distance stays between people at all times. All of the above can be done through suitably spaced deks, along with visible signs, like circles embedded in the floor carpet around the desks.
Despina Katsikakis, the head of Occupier Business Performance at Cushman & Wakefield said, “They are using design to nudge behavior”.
Through the use of arrows on the deck or carpet, people are advised to move clockwise, in the lanes around the office spaces. It is the same kind of approach that is used by healthcare workers in hospitals to dodge the spread of pathogens. These designs even incorporate placing beacons into office spaces, which trail the changes in movements of employees throughout the area via their mobile phones. These allow the company to inspect the potency of its design and so that they can be used to alert people when they break the invisible 6 feet barrier audibly.
Even after such customized designing of the office spaces, the question prevails whether the 2-meter buffer is enough to prevent the spread of a virus as contagious as COVID-19, or we still have no alternative. The virus lives for days on a surface, and floats in the air for three hours, waiting to infect people who breathe it in. Based on these facts, the attempts to keep people secluded may help for a short time, as these will be the spaces that human bodies will be sharing for eight or more hours at a time—especially offices that are as notably inadequately ventilated. Most office spaces do not bring in much fresh air; rather, they recirculate what’s already inside.
All of us will agree to the fact that improved air filtration is the most critical lesson learned from China. One reason behind the labour force returning to work so promptly is that China’s office structures have been introducing high-end air filtration systems for many years now, not only that but the country has introduced its own indoor air certification standard, in acknowledgement to rising pollution.
For now, it can be concluded that COVID-19 will induce many firms & establishments to procure extra air filtration solutions in the short run to promote healthier air. Longer-term, corporations and proprietors may redesign buildings that propose to provide high-quality clean air.
Undoubtedly, COVID-19 has led people to leap into the future of work & trade by a decade, as telecommuting and Zoom meetings with kids yelling and squealing in the background became a conventional practice overnight. The virus has unruffled and brought to attention the dangers of recirculated air in office spaces. As employees have been proving their proficiency working remotely, all of them will only grow less receptive of workplaces that slip to improve health and wellbeing.
What’s exactly going to happen is really interesting. Now everyone will have experience of a work-life alliance which is eventually going to change our viewpoints and expectations of how we work in the future. As an individual, I will want to work being in a safer environment as well as be connected.
Content Source: Cushman & Wakefield
