Returning to work post lockdown...

A return to what exactly? As we prepare to bring people back to work, what type of "new normal" will we be faced with at the office? In the medium term, how will we keep our people safe while imparting the confidence that will enable them to continue collaborating and doing great work in a shared space?

Three key areas can help ensure physical and psychological safety, and business continuity at the office:

• Infrastructure adjustments, layout changes, and maintenance routines
• Protocols for employee engagement and meetings
• HR Policies and benefits updates

1. Infrastructure adjustments, layout changes, and maintenance routines

One thing is certain is that we will be returning to a world of contactless everything. As you enter the building, notice the heavily trafficked routes and which surfaces are commonly touched. Our current office uses biometric fingerprint security access locks. Two dangerous touch points, the scanner and the door handle. Not a great start. A contactless card/NFC phone reader and automatic sliding doors are probably the most obvious improvements we need to make. If you can't change the infrastructure, going low-tech with mounted hands-free sanitiser dispensers nearby could do the trick.

Once inside, office layouts would need to be redesigned. WeWork is rolling out social distancing designs that spread people out. This will be untenable in high rental central business districts in Asia. Whereas our previous design philosophy was centred around creating collaborative space and keeping our teams together, social distancing is going to force workstations to be better "shielded", potentially heralding the return of medium hight partitions (clear acrylic panels?) over the open plan designs of late. For many, this will be a welcomed change of trends; introverts might actually be able to get some thinking done in the office.

Treating the recycled air in our building using standalone HEPA/UV air purifiers in strategic locations and enclosed meeting rooms would be nice.

We also might see stricter institution of personal mugs, greater deployment of step bins, and contactless taps in pantries and toilets. Less food sharing, more individually packaged foods in the larder anyone?

Finally, continued enablement of a mobile workforce is a top priority. Laptops, secure remote access to confidential data, paperless processes, virtual collaboration and management tools. Correspondingly, a need to review the reliability and performance of existing servers and networking services.

2. Protocols for employee engagement and meetings

Mask wearing will be commonplace within the office as will reminders for continuous hand washing and sanitising so it would be important for employers to secure and provide ample supplies of these. It would be considered rude to not comply and put teammates at risk.

In Korea, workers returning to work practice religious cleaning of their own desks/computer equipment every morning. I suggest we do the same. Post reminders and model this behaviour yourself as leaders. These are in addition to the stepped up professional disinfecting services of common spaces. "Deep cleans" between split team rotations should be part of the business continuity protocol.

Meetings will likely incorporate a choice for people to attend virtually (with video on) so rooms should have large screens to be inclusive of our work-from-home colleagues. Clearly large meetings or town halls might have a physical body count limit and be frowned upon for the time being. I hope "useless" meetings that are for information dissemination (where an email clearly would suffice) are eliminated. I wish for the resumption of smaller meetings that need to bring teams together to align and innovate (my cousin who is in game design lamented that work-from-home affects creativity of his teams). Certainly we should think about creating a cadence in how we can come together to maximise the benefits of collaborating in the office and then clearing out to do individual work while others gather to get their collaboration time. The office will become ever more a shared resource of value creation for teams.

3. HR Policies and benefits updates

Coronavirus is a great proponent of HR employee self-services alike e-pay, e-leave, e-reimbursements, e-performance management and e-learning. Get these approved and deployed if not already in play. We're in the Information Age, not the Paper Age.

Staggered/flexi work hours if clocking time is still a need; to balance avoiding commuter crowds and keeping workplace seating density low with client needs and team productivity.

Work-from-home policies for many organisations would need to be updated and relaxed. We are going to resume work on a split team format and it is likely that one team will still be working from home and not just an alternate office location. If each office location aims for lower density without increasing rental floor space, the home is an economical "third space". In this case, it may be important to help offset the cost of broadband subscription at home. There could be a need to purchase external monitors, webcams, headsets and mics for employee home-offices. Perhaps an increase in mobile phone and other allowances.

I hope HR and people managers enforce the rule that ill employees don't come to work, even without a medical certificate from a doctor. Some workplaces get employees to report to work first which puts the workplace at risk. Many employees want to show they are hardworking and try to "push through" one last email or task before going home. Now that they can work from home, they should self isolate first. No shame in reporting in sick if it's genuine. The priority should shift from compliance of the individual to safety of the whole.

The new workplace normal is as much an infrastructure/systems/policy adjustment as it is a human culture intervention. To succeed, we're going to have to keep engaging our people to get them to think up new ways to get things done - and to equip and up-skill them accordingly. There are as many opportunities for improvements as there are inconveniences to tolerate. Share your broad objectives and help everyone see that this an an opportunity to recreate the new norm together.

A return to what exactly? You tell me!