Will We Shake Hands?

My father always told me you can tell a lot about a person by how they shake hands: a firm grip, eye contact, good posture and a smile speak volumes. The Handshake still rules. It has been six weeks since I last shook someone’s hand to say hello.

Conference video calls and group chats are the new normal. They come with a strange acquired intimacy – we have become used to listening to people eat their lunches during a meeting, listening to children taking French classes in the background, the barking of someone’s dog upon seeing the mailman. We joke about still being in our pajamas at three pm. We wonder why people will not turn on their cameras (is the house a mess? Are they too, in their pajamas?), and we miss being at work with our colleagues.

As we ponder a return to the workplace – as Interior Designers, we have already prepared for what will it look and feel like. As Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, said this week: “There is no question that once we start to get to the other side of this spike and are able to talk about easing off social distancing, there will be a need for continual surveillance, continual attentiveness on testing, on contact tracing, on protecting our most vulnerable. That means even as things are able to start getting back to normal, they won’t be back to normal.”

“…even as things are able to start getting back to normal, they won’t be back to normal.” - Justin Trudeau

The preparations to transition workers to a home office, while challenging, are small compared to the work and sequence of events that needs to happen in order to get everyone back to work. As a business owner, there are several things that can be done to make sure your employees feel safe as they transition back to the office. Interior Designers and Architects are uniquely qualified to help with the transition.

The solution is twofold: establishing the social and procedural framework to enable workers to return, and then initiating alterations to the office’s physical space to support the health, safety, and welfare of its occupants. Professional space planning and programming to determine office layout, will increase productivity and minimize the amount of travel within the office to work with team members.

First, widespread, and repeated testing is essential to bringing back the workforce to offices worldwide. Secondly, we must get our loved ones under our guardianship (young children, elders, family with special needs) back to school and/or safe and dependable care environments. Also, safe, and timely transportation is essential. In the absence of a single occupant vehicle, public transit needs to be sufficiently safe and time-efficient to use despite social distancing and disinfection time and volume constraints. Finally, supply and delivery of PPE, fixtures, products, and equipment still need some time to reach current and upcoming needs. Thus, our return will be gradual and somewhat chaotic.

The good news is that preparing the physical work environment for our eventual return is something we can control and do today. Carefully considered floor plans, specifications and product procurement can be done by your Interior Design team.

1.     Create a single one-way entrance, single one-way exit.

2.     Desking may need to be rearranged. Social distancing (SD) guidelines of 2 meters (6 feet) must be maintained around each workstation.

3.     Lunchrooms and meeting spaces furnished to ensure proper SD guidelines.

4.     Multiple paths need to be created each having one-way traffic flow (in the absence of a +/- ten-foot single walkway), with a SD plan in place – clockwise travel, for example.

5.     The use of floor dots to indicate ideally measured standing, circulation and waiting locations for safety, planned out for congregative spaces such as: elevators, washrooms, coffee stations and copy rooms.

6.     Plexiglass dividers or sneeze guards can be added to open-plan office spaces. Temporary setups are available.

7.     Provision of generous sized paper mats at workstations, replaced daily. Virologists’ research at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) have concluded that the virus lasts up to three days on non-porous surfaces, but only up to 24 hours on cardboard or paper.

8.     Provision of face coverings and gloves (and other PPE if needed) at the entry, and a safe mode of disposal upon exiting at the end of the day.

9.     Provision of touchless hand sanitizer stations and, if possible, installation of extra hand washing sinks in general-access areas.

10.  Arranging for regular electrostatic cleaning - positively charged particles in the spray cling to and coat any surface for the disinfecting agent to sanitize—ask your property manager about this.

11.  Creative re-organization of employee work shifts to reduce numbers of staff at any given time. Suggest staggered shifts, split shifts, night shifts, or perhaps a combination of working from home and working at the office. Some may want to work different hours to accommodate childcare responsibilities, or simply during quieter times to dispel anxiety about contracting the virus.

12.  Open up outdoor areas for breaks and lunchtime. Research consistently shows that UV light can help to disrupt the shell of the virus. Sunlight increases production of Vitamin D and reduces stress, which both help to create positive health outcomes.

“The good news is that preparing the physical work environment for our eventual return is something we can control and do today.”

Additional preparations and changes that your Interior Designer and Architect can assist with may include:

1.     Addition of single- and double-occupancy pods for calls and meetings.

2.     Passive temperature scanners or infrared body scanners at entry – this could be a useful preemptive technique to help potentially identify COVID-19 cases, and help with reducing employee anxiety, however, keep in mind that up to 48% of COVID carriers/cases are considered asymptomatic – meaning, no fever.

3.     Installation of an LED Halo HVAC disinfection system inside the building’s mechanical systems to kill potentially recirculating airborne virus particles, especially between tenancies.

4.     Checking the mechanical system for mold and Legionella growth if HVAC and hot water systems have been turned off, or if regular scheduled maintenance and testing was postponed.

5.     Adjusting HVAC air flow if possible, to include areas with negative air pressure to pull airborne particles away from common or higher-traffic areas.

6.     Touchless entry and access technology such as motion and pressure sensors, retinal and facial scanners, gesture recognition, voice recognition and 3D fingerprint touchless entry systems.

7.     Nano coatings that are anti-microbial, anti-viral and anti-fungal. They reduce surface contamination and are self-cleaning by using an oxidation reaction. These coatings can be applied by spraying or dipping and adhere to most surfaces.

8.     Upgrading fixtures to include touchless faucets and hand dryers, installing foot operated door openers and closers.

9.     UV Phone sanitizing stations using UV-C light to clean phones.

10.  All payments and financial transactions done touch-free through a phone app.

Policy and procedural guidelines, from both corporate and government authorities, will also see a dramatic shift. We should all be looking to countries like China, South Korea and Italy to analyze their corporate reintegration strategies and learn from them. Virtual conference meetings should take the place of in-person meetings where possible. Business travel should be severely limited and remain in-country for now—no international travel until testing and tracing is solidly in place. It is possible that workers without access to sick leave and health care will have new reason to demand them. Upcoming Canadian initiatives include a “Reopening Checklist”: Dr. Teresa Tam, Chief Public officer of Canada is working on it. An Immunity Task Force is being put together by the Canadian government to study the level of immunity in Canada. The United States do not yet have a coordinated strategy; some states plan to reopen as soon as next week, others are looking toward late summer or even the fall.

It is essential to be patient, and do this in a gradual, systematic way. We must get the economy moving again, but not at the expense of a spike in COVID transmissions and lives lost. If we remain vigilant, and maintain these new (and admittedly, dystopic) measures, we can hopefully continue to keep R0 rates at below 1.0 which means a reduction in overall cases over time until we have a vaccine.

It feels like we are in a war. We are. A war where all of humanity is against a common foe. Similarly, as there is a feeling of pre-9/11 and post 9/11, there will be a feeling that there is a pre-COVID-19 and a post-COVID-19.

I’m sure that we’ll need some distance from this to fully appreciate how much has, and will, change. My teenage son used to enthusiastically wave to me as a child. The wave eventually turned into a little hand flip, which then became a nod. The famous ‘Nod’ – a sudden, but tiny, upward jerk of the chin with a bemused facial expression.  Perhaps the touchless Nod will become the standard business and social greeting mantle formerly held by the Handshake. I wonder how long it will take my father to agree.

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Christine Weber Craik is an Associate and a Senior Interior Designer with the Vancouver office of Kasian Architecture, Interior Design and Planning.

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Christine brings over 20 years of experience working in the design industry, specifically in senior living, multifamily and geriatric healthcare design. She strives to create environments in which others can healthfully and happily live their best lives. She has received her Registered Professional membership with the ASID, IDC (IDIBC), NCIDQ and IIDA, and she is a Board Certified Healthcare Interior Designer with the AAHID. Christine is a member of the BC Care Providers Association and the Canadian Association on Gerontology. She brings a depth of knowledge and experience having worked on complex projects in the senior living and wellness sector, including: luxury independent living. assisted living, memory and dementia care, complex care and geriatric behavioral health environments in the US and Canada.