Over recent months, following the latest government guidelines, many businesses have closed their offices and workplaces. Although some have kept their offices operational with minimal staff, the majority of employees that are office-based are required to work from home remotely where possible.
As the restrictions are due to change and begin to ease over the next few months, eventually employers will be allowing their staff to return to the workplace. However, despite trying to continue with normality, it is safe to say that the social distancing guidelines and safety measures are here to stay.
But how will these covid safety measures affect the workplace and will the current office layout allow employees to socially distance and work effectively?
In this post, we hope to give our readers some insight on the current restrictions employees could face coming back into the office and also how an evolving workplace design could help the team to work more efficiently and safely in the future.
Working from home has now become the new norm during this covid outbreak. People have learnt to adjust to working from their living rooms, and employers have also noticed, that with the right technologies in place, the majority of their staff are able to work productively from home and still reach their targets and goals.
However, this can come with a cost as there are financial implications involved with running a business. Business owners are having to recoup the costs from lost revenues with projects and services put on hold throughout the pandemic.
As the restrictions are predicted to be eased in the upcoming months, business owners need to start to consider if their office spaces are covid secure. Businesses will need to plan and redesign their working environments to accommodate their staff’s social practices and new ways of working. This could be as simple as continuing with the flexibility of working from home to the more technical redesign of workspaces to allow everyone to adhere to the government health and safety guidelines.
What does an office electrical redesign involve?
One of the most important aspects to consider when planning an office redesign is to think about the electrical requirements for your staff. Employees will need to be able to connect with electrical points safely from multiple locations to avoid restrictions when they are working.
Reconfigure flexible office spaces.
To keep to the safety distancing guidelines, you may decide to use every alternate desk in the office. Although this is a good solution for employees, it does reduce your space capacity by 50%. Utilising conference rooms, learning areas, and breakout spaces as dedicated working environments can be another cost-effection solution.
This will allow staff to keep at a physical distance and eliminates the need for business owners to lease new office spaces.
You can also hire electrical fit-out engineers, who can help relocate the location of the power and data points to ensure the new working spaces are fit for purpose. It also gives the opportunity for employees to work from a more flexible yet collaborative working environment, as they are no longer confined to a single working space.
Planning ahead…
It is safe to say, in the future; workplace designs will need to cater for the new post-covid way of working. In order for businesses to be productive and successful, it must be flexible and able to adapt to new challenges.
As it stands, the current focus is on health and safety so there needs to be a seamless transition between the workplace and office-based working for employees to continue working effectively and keep businesses running.
