Back to Office – A Risk Management Approach

Last month, before most European countries decided to go on lockdown, we wrote our first LinkedIn article urging companies to look after their employees and embrace remote work.

Of course, now we know that several governments around the world ended up enforcing lockdowns, and as of today more than 3 billion people are in that condition. The question now is when and how to get back to the office.

Today we do an overview of the main priorities that should govern a back to the office plan, along with a risk/benefit matrix to support the decision process. We do not pretend this will be applicable everywhere, but hopefully it can be used as a framework or just make you think about yours and your team scenario.

Please note that although some of the points presented here are inspired by my company policy, this is not the policy and is not endorsed in any form. It is just my thoughts.

Before getting into the details, let us set some basis:

• People are scared. For more than a month we have been told that going out was putting our life in danger and nothing has changed much. It is important you acknowledge this, coach by helping in identifying the risks, establish clear and fair criteria. At the end of the day each employee shall feel and be in control.
• Clearly set expectations – What is the company priority? How is company protecting the health of its employees? Why are we going back to the office? Why is it important to the company?
• In the coming months, the office environment will be vastly different from what it used to be as social distancing measures will need to be implemented. So, do not consider bringing people to the office for the sake of creating social/team bonds or build company culture. If people are coming to the office to speak over the phone or Teams, then there is no point in exposing them to any risk, provided they can do it productively from home.
• The best way to increase productivity is to ensure that priority is given to people that really need the office facilities to be productive.
• Plan early – this will be crucial to identify problems and solutions before reopening.
• Start small – by limiting the number of people back to the office at an initial stage you will limit the probability of contamination and have the possibility to test the exceptional measures at a smaller demand rate.
• Prepare to scale – Monitor the situation, implement feedback loops and use the first weeks to fine tune the procedures. Step back if you don’t have positive feedback.
• Communicate transparently with every employee – including those that are still at home. Sharing the experience of who is already in the office will decrease the anxiety on those that will be coming next.

 Note that we have been mentioning “you”, “do this”, “do that”. “You” means company, different teams should be handling different topics. We would suggest a Team of Teams with fast communication channels as the best organization model – but that is beyond the scope of this article.

Once we know the objective, the first question for any plan is when to start? To define the date when people will start to get back to the office, we would need to trust the national/local authorities’ guidelines.

The next question is how many and who?

We already mentioned “start small”, but how small? First, obviously you need to consider the required people to run the facilities. On top of that, we would target a maximum of 10-20% for the first week.

Who? As noted above, should be people that really need to be in the office to be productive. Yet, even if the potential productivity gains are massive, we should not expose anyone to unmanageable risks. This is clearly a risk/benefit analysis and so we thought about using a decision matrix as a guide.

There is a still lingering question – “Why accept any risk at all?”. Well, because that is what we do every day of our lives. Every time we get into a car or a plane, every time we cross a street. Even on these troublesome days, there are people going out to work every single day. Why? Because the benefit clearly outpaces the risk.

The Decision Matrix

Last step before getting into the matrix – people that you should not even consider bringing back to the office for the time being:

• People showing or living with someone with Covid-19 symptoms
• People suffering from a respiratory condition
• People older than 65
• People with personal reasons not allowing them to go back to the office (kids schools closed, for example).

Our decision matrix has two axes:

• Productivity Increase at the Office – The expected gain in individual productivity if a person comes back to the office
• The Risk Factor – A combined risk factor, the higher it is, higher is the risk 

The decision matrix provides clear criteria for defining who should be prioritized in coming back to the office, those that combine a high productivity gain with a low risk.

The Risk Factor is the combination of two other factors – Commuting Factor and Age Factor.

Commuting is a key factor, you may have the perfect work environment, taken all the measures, but people still need to get to the office and back home.

If traveling by public transportation, the risk increases with the commuting time and the number of required line changes. So, we propose the following (the higher the factor, the higher the risk):

Commuting Factor:

• Walk or individual transport: 1
• Public transport <30 min, 1 line: 2
• Public transport <30 min, 1-2 lines: 3
• Public transport >30 min or > 2 lines: 4

As seen in our last article, the effects of Covid-19 are highly dependent on age. 88% of the deaths are above 65, so people above 65 will need to stay at home. Hospitalizations are more than twice as likely in the 45-65 age group than in the 15-44. So, our age factor explains the increase in risk with age.

Age Factor:

• Age < 45: 1
• 45 ≤ Age < 65: 2

The Risk Factor is calculated by multiplying the Commuting and Age Factors:

Risk Factor = Commuting Factor × Age Factor

Using the matrix, the Risk Factor and the Productivity Gain we can calculate the Score (the colored cell in the Matrix).

 Let us take the example of Annie – She is 33 and her commuting time is 20 minutes on a single line. She is having a tough time working at home because she does not have access to the right tools. If she goes back to the office, her productivity will increase by 30%.

• Commuting Factor = 2
• Age Factor = 1
• Risk Factor = 2 × 1 = 2

On the matrix, combining the Risk Factor with the Productivity Increase, she gets a score of 4.

The Decision Process

Each employee determines his/her score. After all, they know their age, their commuting time and productivity better than anyone else.

With the score we get a color:

• Green – Should come back to the office
• Yellow – Mitigation measures required to come back to the office
• Red – Should continue to work remotely

 For the first week, we defined green for scores of 3 and lower and red for 8 and higher.

Annie, was in the yellow – so we’ll need to find mitigation measures for her and that is where managers are crucial in finding a solution with their people. For example, Annie could come to the office only 3 days a week. This will decrease her risk factor to 60% (3/5) of the initial value, thus becoming 1.2 (2 × 60%).

With a Risk Factor of 1.2 and Productivity Factor of 2 (25-50%), the Score is now 2.4 and she will be allowed to come back to the office. (If implementing part-time in the office, establish fixed days for everyone to avoid cross-contamination).

While having the reviews with the “yellows” it is vital for the manager to understand if some are feeling anxious about coming back and those should not be forced. The constrained office environment will only generate more stress and that is not what we are looking for. The feedback of the first waves will eventually bring down that anxiety and make it safe to go back.

 As the time moves on, your organization will learn how to work in the new environment. People, procedures, and extraordinary measures will adapt, and you will have feedback. You can then change the colors in the matrix. For example, after a first successful week, you may change the green threshold to 4 and the red one to 9. How many more people will that bring to the office? Can you manage it? Avoid big steps.

 We believe there are several benefits in following this approach:

• Health risks are minimized
• Office resources will be prioritized to those who can benefit more. So, the company productivity gains will be steeper in the first weeks
• The perception of fairness increases with a clearly stated set of rules. People may dispute the rules, but there will be limited “why should I go back if he is not?” discussions
• Everyone is part of the process and each one stays in control of his own situation

 What needs to change?

Now that we have come this far, the last question is how to prepare the office to start again, what measures need to be implemented, how to minimize risks.

There is one key action here – ask your people! Every single one! They know the office better than anyone else. Do not focus only on the office, but also on the commuting.

You can run surveys and make what we would call “virtual design thinking” sessions. Set-up teams of 5 in role playing with:

• 1 Explorer
• 3 Detectives
• 1 Note Keeper

The role of the explorer is to describe his routine from home to the office, in the office and back home. So, he would say “(…) I finally arrived at the office, got through the front door and took the elevator”.

The detectives will try to find the potential issues “Was the door open? Is it an automatic door? Did you touch it? Was the hall crowded? How did you call the elevator? Did you shake hands? ...”

The Note Keeper, well you got it…

At the end of the session the team will have identified multiple potential sources of contamination and then start ideating solutions.

The exercise will only be completed after testing the solutions, iterating, and improving.

Thank you for reading. We would love to have your thoughts and comments.

Stay and keep the ones around you safe.