Thought of the Day - August 20 - Rolling Back Offices

Working from home and while the move to a virtual office has been a trend for more than a decade it has recently been accelerated by the coronavirus.

The new mantra is not "people going to work", but "work going to people".

But this is more easily said than done. While working at home may be a short-term option during a crisis, most organizations and staff are still in the early stages of understanding the implications. Robust policies need to be drawn up, benefits revisited, workstation ergonomics need to be thought through, information security needs to be revisited.

For example: Your PC dies, does IT make house calls? You fall down the stairs getting a coffee at home, is this is a lost-time accident? You can no longer put up with an office-in-a-closet, is the provision of a home office a condition of employment?

On the other hand, trends in physical offices over the last decade are now getting rolled back.

Remember: open offices, personalized workstations, team huddle centres, coffee station hubs, energy-efficient air-handling, densification, noise protection, team-building events? Welp, not anymore.

Those that still go to the office will see these trends replaced with: a return to closed offices, depersonalized workstations (that can be cleaned nightly), minimal use of meeting rooms, no communal areas, hand-washing hubs, opening every window you can, occupancy restrictions, spit protection, and limited group interactions.

The workplace is changing to the new normal, and fast. Is your organization prepared?

Cheers

Cliff