Lessons From A CEO Roundtable: Retrofitting your Current Workplace

With stage one of Ontario’s restart phase now a reality, leaders must ensure they have the necessary protocols, processes, and behaviours in place to diminish risk and alleviate concerns surrounding the return to physical workplaces. Not only is a fair bit of nervousness and apprehension being felt by employees, there will also be strict legislation surrounding the conditions necessary for workers to return to office buildings. Businesses will need to address these concerns with systemic—not cosmetic—changes.

During a recent CEO Roundtable on ‘Retrofitting your Current Workplace’, Marcia Mayhew of Mayhew Inc. and Kimberly Long of Reprodux shared some excellent insights and ideas on how to reorganize your workplace to address the need for increased social distancing, sanitization, and disinfection: 

What worked yesterday will not work today

Existing workplaces were designed to support high levels of human interaction—so the ‘6-foot rule’ will clearly have a significant impact on the seating arrangements and gatherings permitted in most offices. Densely populated, open plan work environments featuring high-mobility communal spaces now pose a serious challenge as we strive to limit close physical interactions.

Retrofitting your current workplace

In terms of physical distancing and maximizing employee wellness, a great deal can be achieved by reducing density, revising seating protocols, changing geometry, and dividing space using screens and panels throughout your office.

Reducing density is the most obvious way to encourage physical distancing. The recommended occupancy moving forward is about 50%. Given that you will likely be rotating your team members and won’t be bringing everyone back at once, there should be more room available to accommodate the required changes.

Here are some key considerations regarding seating and geometry:

• Reconfigure your workstations away from a linear approach to avoid the face-to-face standard.
• Stagger occupancy between workstation groupings.
• Limit any hoteling workstations to single use per day.  
• Decrease the number of occupants within collaborative spaces (such as lunch rooms or meeting rooms) to allow for the required 6’ ‘bubble’. Note there is no magic formula when it comes to determining how many people can be accommodated in any given room, since every room and every layout is different. A 22-person boardroom may end up accommodating only 8 people.
• Examine your space plan, look for any ‘hot zones’ or ‘collision zones’ (such as elevators, meeting rooms, cafeterias, and washrooms) and then figure out the safest way for people to move in and out of these areas.
• Remove lounge seating or place common-room chairs two meters apart.

Space dividers between workstations, sneeze guards, and other partitions are a great way to assist with physical distancing while still allowing people to work within earshot of each other. But remember to consider the surfaces of your partitions: traditional fabric divider panels may be difficult to clean, whereas acrylic panels can be easily wiped down while also allowing you to maintain an open office feel.

 Here are some additional ways you can upgrade your office:

• Make cleaning products and sanitizers highly visible and accessible.
• Make PPE the new norm for intra-office meetings, movement, and conversations.
• Clean all work areas multiple times a day and make it highly visible.
• Declutter and remove hard to clean surfaces whenever possible.
• Ensure your HVAC and mechanical systems are properly maintained.

The importance of visual cues

Old habits die hard, so you will need to create and install signage throughout your workplace to visibly communicate new protocols and safety procedures surrounding physical distancing, sanitization guidelines, personal hygiene etc. This will help ease the transition for your employees.

Markings on the floor to indicate where to stand while waiting for the elevator, taped-off workstations to prompt employees to sit at optimal distances from their coworkers, and posters helpfully reminding people to wear their PPE, are all great ways of visually signalling accepted behaviour.

Note that landlords are responsible for any required signage related to common spaces, staircases, elevators, washrooms, and foyers. Get on the phone with your landlord now to make sure that they are taking the necessary steps to keep your building safe.

Closing Thoughts

Any changes you execute will only be as good as your team’s follow-through. To maximize awareness and compliance, it’s important to educate your team on new physical distancing, sanitization and disinfection practices and procedures before they return to the office. Develop and deliver training on any applicable best practices and consider holding a first-day orientation to lay out your expectations and clearly convey the rules for working in the new normal. And, in addition to making sure your new guidelines are accessible, understood and accepted, ensure they are also enforced—for the protection of your employees, and your business.