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SAN FRANCISCO – The modern corporate office is known for its collaborative, open workspaces, internal cafeterias, and standing desks with space for two giant computer monitors.
Soon, there may be a new must-have benefit: the sneeze guard.
This desktop mountable plexiglass barrier is one of many ideas employers are pondering as they contemplate a return to the workplace after coronavirus blockages. Your post-pandemic makeovers can include hand sanitizers built into desks that stand at 90-degree angles or are enclosed by translucent plastic partitions; air filters that push air down and not up; outdoor meeting space to allow collaboration without viral transmission; and windows that really open, for a freer airflow.
The conversation about reconfiguring the American workplace is taking place across the business world, from small businesses to giant Wall Street companies. Furniture and design companies that have been hired for the makeovers say the virus may even be tilting workplaces toward a concept they had strayed from since the Mad Men era: privacy.
The question is whether any of the contemplated changes will result in safer workplaces.
“We are not experts in infectious diseases, we are simply furniture people,” said Tracy D. Wymer, vice president of workplace at Knoll, a company that manufactures office furniture and has been hired by eager clients, including some of the world’s largest corporations. large in the country, find ways to make workplaces less risky to health.
True disease experts say a virus-free office environment is an impossible dream. Dr. Rajneesh Behal, an internal medicine physician and chief quality officer for One Medical, a primary care chain that recently held a business webinar on how to reopen, said: “A central message is, don’t expect your risk to decrease to zero.”
Much of what is known about the transmission of disease in the workplace comes from studies of flu transmission in the workplace, which share some similarities with the new coronavirus, Dr. Lisa Winston said. , an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco General Zuckerberg San Francisco Hospital “We know that the flu spreads in the workplace among healthy working adults,” he said. A The 2016 analysis of various research papers from around the world found that about 16 percent of flu transmission takes place in the office.
Other research shows that one of the best ways to reduce transmission in the workplace is to provide paid sick leave that encourages sick employees to stay home.
Dr. Winston said that another basic step in reducing risk is simply to have “fewer people in one space.”
That’s a concept that runs counter to the workplace spirit of the past two decades. The acceptance of open floor plans dates back to the first dotcom boom in the late 1990s. It was hailed as essential for collaboration and creativity, but of course it’s also about bringing more people into a expensive office space, a situation that people now realize creates puzzling conditions for Petri dishes.
Mr. Wymer of Knoll, the furniture design company, said his goal had changed from making offices virus-free, which is impractical, to redoing them to make workers feel safer.
“We cannot ask employees to return to the same office,” he said. “Businesses feel that we have to address fear at the root.”
For now, that may mean there are no more shared desks (a concept in the business world known as “hospitality”), side-by-side seating, or cafes where people congregate to discuss a project about fruit water. or a coffee with hazelnut milk. It could mean increased use of materials, such as copper, that are less hospitable to germs, and reconfigure ventilation systems that flow air from the ceiling down rather than the floor up, which is considered safer.
Mobify, a Vancouver company that builds online storefronts for major retailers like Under Armor and Lancôme, has 40 employees who share space with other startups. It is the epitome of the 21st century workplace with desks next to each other in a row, with no partitions and open space for a total of 100 people at full capacity to gather for meetings, or to play table tennis and pool.
Now Igor Faletksi, the company’s chief executive, said: “It’s less about fun and more about safety.”
“Huge buffets?” He said, “Forget about that for now.”
Mr. Faletksi is contemplating allowing more employees to work from home and even moving the headquarters to a new building with better air circulation.
“People want to have a secure collaboration,” he said.
Some companies have begun to mention a return to one of the most ridiculous office design concepts in history: the cubicle. There is also talk of the transparent cousin of the cubicle, known as the sneeze guard.
“Cough and sneeze shields” is how they are marketed by the California company Obex P.E. in emails to potential customers. “Lots of options to suit your style and needs,” says the email, adding: “Decrease person-to-person contact. Practice social distancing.
These guards already have a house in banks and supermarkets, but they are getting a new boost in the corporate office space.
In a 12-page Power Point report, “Covid 19 and The Future of Furniture,” produced by CBRE, one of the world’s largest commercial real estate firms, it is suggested to add high laminate gallery panels to workstations or banks.
The highest plastic barriers extending over desks have been in use in an office led by one of the country’s leading infectious disease experts, Dr. Susan Huang, medical director of epidemiology and infection prevention at the University of California. , Irvine. The barriers “were not designed for the coronavirus,” said Dr. Huang, but rather to maintain a sense of collaboration and reduce noise. Barriers can now have the added benefit of creating some biological isolation.
But Dr. Huang said security in the workplace would require more than plastic shields. In fact, his lab reopened last week, and the first thing he did was hold a meeting to explain the new hygiene rules. At a conference room meeting, Dr. Huang gave each employee a bottle of hand sanitizer and a mask. “I had to tell them,” They will wear a mask all day, “he said,” and tell them how to do it right and that they have to do it. “
“And don’t touch your mask without first using your hand sanitizer,” he recalled saying at that meeting.
For smaller companies, the changes may be more modest, but the problem weighs just as heavily. Howard Cao, CEO of Form & Fiction, a start-up incubator in San Francisco, said he had been considering changing the touchpad on the front door to the office that his seven employees shared with workers from other companies. UPS. “We will probably have to reconfigure that into something with Bluetooth or a key fob,” Cao said.
Inside the office, look to create physical space or barriers between employees who sit together at long tables. “It can be as simple as a mini-divider between people,” he said.
Like a cubicle?
Yes, he admitted, although it is not a good word for him. “I have always been very anti-cubicle,” he said.
The proposed changes to the offices have seemed more aesthetic than substantive, especially the sneeze shield.
“I call it social distancing theater, like TSA security theater after 9/11,” said Ron Wiener, CEO of iMovR, a Seattle company that designs permanent desks that are used by many large employers, from Google and Facebook to the Department of Defense.
In the end, the solution for many employers may not be to spend a lot of money equipping their new office spaces, but simply to have many employees continue to work at home, as a way of achieving two goals: keeping people safe and saving money.
This is the key point in a story about the post-pandemic office makeover. In the name of security, money will likely be analyzed for a long time, too. In this case, the targets can go together as a protective glove hand.
Moving to the home offices “has worked really well,” said Susan Stick, general counsel for Evernote, maker of digital note-taking programs with 282 employees. “You can’t put that genie back in the bottle.”
