OFFICE BLOG

 By Padmasree Kolluru

As the pandemic continues and most of us are forced to work from home, employees are now wanting to get back to offices, and employers are looking at ways to re-open their offices. Covid-19 hasn’t just affected where we work — it also has changed how we work. 

Bearing social distancing in mind, here is a quick guide from The Global Furniture Group on what to consider and how to reconfigure your work space. With decades of designing and planning office spaces that have the motto of bringing employees together, this is something that throws a challenge at every one of us- the designers, employers and employees.

Three Strategies for Rebooting the Workplace:

Let's explore three planning strategies to adapt your existing workplace planning to support social distancing guidelines:

1. Shift scheduling the workforce

2. Reconfiguring the workplace

3. Redefining shared spaces

Shifting Scheduling the Workforce:

Altering employee work schedule maintains individual

 seating assignments, ensuring employees retain

their own space. Redesigning the benching layouts is one of the plausible options:

Linear Benching Layout, 90 degree Benching Layout, 90 degree Layout, or 120 degree Layout.

You have your employees come in shifts-alternating days or times, maintaining assigned seats and no sharing. 

Strategy 2: reconfiguring the workplace:

If you require all of your employees to be at work at the same time, you can either allow your employees to face forward, or add tower storage between people to provide additional distance.

 

The offset or rotation of desks ensures employees don't face each other and adding screens and dividers can also help with the social distancing. This strategy requires an expansion of real estate or reallocation of existing space to accommodate product solutions that maintain proper distancing protocols. 

Strategy 3: redefining shared spaces:

The idea of getting back to office is to build the team efforts back in and increase in the employee engagement. For this to happen in a healthy way, you need to reduce the capacity of communal and
shared spaces. 

New directives for meeting and kitchen spaces, eliminating chairs and offsetting lounge seating, increase in the use of video conferencing, widening the pathways , wayfinding directing the flow of traffic, introducing new sanitation stations are some of the ideas to redefine shared spaces. 

A before and after depiction of the office designing:

Role of management in creating a safe return to work ensuring the health of employees as the top priority will have a long lasting impact on the business and its culture. 

With 30 years in this business, Lindsey's Office Furniture is one of the biggest dealers of the Global Furniture Group. At Linsdey's we carry a huge selection of height adjustable desks, ergonomic chairs, cubicles- new and refurbished, and we also will help you with free designing and planning of your office space.