Want to ensure that you have a Covid-Safe office design? Are you trying to keep your employees safe during COVID?
While a lot of progress has been made in the battle against Covid, it’s not over yet. If your employees have returned to the office or will be returning soon, it’s important that you’ve taken the proper precautions to ensure their safety and comfort.
Luckily, we’re here to help you with this. In this guide, we’ll tell you how you can keep your employees safe and healthy during Covid.
1. Change the Layout
One of the keys to creating a safe office design during a pandemic is to change your office layout substantially.
An office layout that allows for physical distancing is ideal and can help ensure that there is minimal chance of a virus spreading. Creating larger individual workspaces or adding more space between each work area can help you put an adequate distance between employees.
Open plan designs are also a good choice for improving employee safety. Open floor plans come with several benefits that help in a post-pandemic world. With minimal furniture and surfaces around, there will be fewer areas to clean and fewer potential places for bacteria to cling to. Open floor plans also allow for great ventilation, which can also help when trying to reduce the transmission of Covid.
2. Rework Dining Areas
In addition to redesigning your office layout for social distancing, it’s a good idea to make changes to dining spaces or break areas as well. You may also want to look for alternatives to workplace cafeterias.
Some ways to improve a dining area include spacing out tables and chairs appropriately or adding physical barriers between seats and tables. In addition to this, it’s a good idea to stagger visits to a break room or dining area as well. Keeping a minimal amount of people in the room at all times can help to reduce risks.
On top of all this, it’s also important that you take hygiene and cleanliness in the dining facility seriously. It’s a good idea to add signage to encourage handwashing and the cleaning of appliances, tables, and chairs after use.
3. Have a Plan For Foot Traffic
Aside from improving the layout of your office, it’s also worth thinking about the flow of traffic within your building. Consider redirecting walking paths in your office and encouraging one-way foot traffic. Adding one-way routes can help reduce the likelihood of employees walking in close proximity to others while in the office.
Using floor stickers that include directions for which way foot traffic should flow can help encourage social distancing in your office. Particularly if your office is short on space or if there are a lot of employees moving around throughout the day, changing the flow of foot traffic in your office can go a long way in improving safety and reducing the spread of Covid.
4. Upgrade Furniture and Appliances
During a pandemic, it’s also important that businesses start investing in new types of furniture and appliances. No-touch amenities and furniture that can be easily moved as needed can be very helpful to have in a workplace.
Consider adding furniture that is lightweight and that can be easily cleaned as necessary. Furniture that is made of microfiber can be a good choice and will be easier to clean than other options.
It’s also a great idea to invest in appliances for breakrooms, dining areas, bathrooms, and other parts of the office that require minimal touching to operate. Items that are touched often can harbor bacteria and viruses and can serve as a safety risk.
Hand-activated equipment such as soap dispensers, voice-activated conference rooms, automatic door opening mechanisms and other types of no-touch equipment can be a great investment.
5. Install Safety Equipment
If you’re aiming to improve office design during Covid, it’s also important that your business embraces new tools and procedures that can help.
Getting into the habit of checking employee temperatures before they enter the office or using other screening tools can serve as a great way to offer additional protection and to give your employees better peace of mind. It’s a good idea to install temperature check stations at the entrances to your office.
You should also install more cleanliness and hygiene tools around your office place as well. Ensure that all bathroom soap dispensers and taps are working as they should be and consider adding hand sanitizer dispensers throughout your office.
Additionally, you may want to consider installing plastic shielding and extra barriers where there will be a lot of social contact, such as around front desk reception areas or between workspaces.
6. Increase Awareness
One of the best things you can do to improve safety in your office is to increase transparency and communication with your team.
It’s important that you send regular updates about your measures for reducing transmission of Covid. Ensure that employees are made aware of any changes in the office related to improving safety as well as any screening protocols that you implement.
It’s also important to add plenty of signage around the office to remind your employees to do their part in preventing the spread of Covid. Consider placing reminders to use hand sanitizer and to practice social distancing around risky areas, such as in bathrooms, dining areas, and conference rooms.
Successfully Creating a Covid-Safe Office Design
If you want to create a Covid-Safe office design, then it’s critical that you take the steps mentioned above. By taking the right precautions and investing in employee safety, your employees will be able to return to work with minimal risk.
Need help creating a safe office design? Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you with your goal.
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