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Little Find

What does the post-pandemic office look like?

Have you considered changes, big and small, to your office for the gradual return of your employees? Don’t get too lost in the details or you risk forgetting the objective.

“Benching” and “hot-desking” are out. Temperature checks, hand sanitizers and the removal of seats in common areas are in. Huge buffets in cafeterias are out, while pre-packaged, single-serving items are in. The parameters of the post-pandemic office are being dictated by the laws of social distancing. The world is moving away from open-space arrangements that were meant to benefit collective creativity and collaboration and back toward, yes, cubicles.  

But health experts warn that you can’t expect your risk to go down to zero. If you focus too much on office design, you may forget that the best way to reduce disease transmission is through office policy:  encourage sick employees to stay home and allow telecommuting, when possible. Even after the pandemic fades, working from home will remain a major trend, analysts predict. Says Evernote general counsel Susan Stick, We cant put the genie back into the bottle.  

 

To go further:  

The Pandemic May Mean the End of the Open-Floor Office” by Matt RichtelThe New York Times, 4 May 2020.  

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Françoise Tollet
Published by Françoise Tollet
She spent 12 years in industry, working for Bolloré Technologies, among others. She co-founded Business Digest in 1992 and has been running the company since 1998. And she took the Internet plunge in 1996, even before coming on board as part of the BD team.