The health, safety and welfare of workforce teams must remain the top priority as organizations plan to reopen corporate centers over the months ahead. Social distancing is now a standard operating procedure to factor into revised real estate strategies and behavioral customs that will ensure everyone is safe and productive.
In a survey conducted in mid-April, the Institute for Public Relations and Peppercomm asked communication executives and senior leaders about how their companies are engaging and communicating with their workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study included questions about the early stages of their plans for WFH employees to return to offices as restrictions are lifted.
For the complete IPR-Peppercomm survey report, click here. |
Among more than 400 respondents:
- 27 percent planned a phased return.
- 12 percent said employees would be coming back all at once.
- 60 percent had not started planning or stated they didn’t know.
As an internal change-management communications leader, it’s my responsibility to partner with and advise senior management to ensure workplace health and safety messages are cascaded clearly, compassionately, cohesively, and consistently at all levels through leadership town hall webcasts, supervisor one-on-ones, intranet pages, signage, and other multi-channel resources.
My starting point is close, continuous collaboration with my fellow leaders representing HR, operations, maintenance, security, legal, and other functions. Together, we would recommend, plan and deploy short- and long-term measures, which I would advocate to include — but not necessarily limit to — the following:
Ban handshakes.
Keep meetings short and contact-less.
Consolidate shared spaces and eliminate or reduce desk ownership so team workers can work more often from home.
Transition to unassigned seating that allows employees to establish their own boundaries and pick a seat that enables distancing.
Reorient work points so individuals do not directly face each other.
Remove seats at communal tables and in conference rooms to give people additional personal space. Or transition these rooms into scrum spaces by removing the table entirely to give people more space and eliminate touchpoints.
Specify limits on the number of people who can occupy conference rooms and other shared spaces at one time.
Declutter cubicles and other workspaces, create clean-desk policies that allow surfaces to be properly cleaned daily, and update facility maintenance contracts to ensure these steps are taken.
Create physical barriers, add plexiglass shields, increase seat spacing and add longer communal tables.
Work with building management to improve air circulation, filtration and ventilation, and confirm cleaning protocols align with standards and recommendations of public health agencies.
Increase humidity levels to 40 to 60 percent to reduce infection. Use portable humidifiers if the HVAC system does not allow for this.
Encourage voluntary self-temperature checks by installing disposable thermometer dispensers in the same areas where hand sanitizers, first-aid kits and AEDs are located.
Reduce business travel.
Implement a four-day work week and stagger teams across five days to reduce density on any given day.
Install voice activation or hands-free controls that reduce the need to contact commonly touched items.
Switch to VOIP communication technology instead of phone handsets.
Eliminate shared keyboard trays.
Assign lockers, file drawers or storage cabinets to individuals to separate personal items.
Remove trash cans from individual desks and replace them with a communal location that consolidates sanitation.
Install automatic-opening doors to ensure no-touch access.
Retrofit elevators in high-rise buildings to reduce push-buttons, assign each car to service a designated group of floors, and program organizational ID/security badges to be swiped for access to cars. Limit push-buttons for emergency calls only.
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