Guest blog by Rhia Jordan. Rhia is a part-time contributing writer, and full-time employee affairs consultant for an IT firm. She has a B.A. in Psychology and has experience in HR and copywriting. She loves to explore visual arts in her spare time.
Remote working has been the standard setup so far in the pandemic, but eventually, it has started to grow more like a burden than a convenience. Noelle Fauver previously pointed out the importance of a central hub now that working from home has provided its fair share of difficulties.
Work-life boundaries have started to diminish. Many people feel more trapped at home, not just because of lockdown measures, but also because of the work stress building up. And many feel a lack of collaborative and motivating energy from the physical presence of co-workers. Companies have started to consider giving employees the option to return to the office, but careful planning and execution is crucial in order to ensure everyone’s safety.
Form a Planning Committee
It’s not enough to just hand the responsibility of planning to the HRD. It’s crucial to form a team that is also headed by the Health, Safety, and Security Departments as well, or at least form a committee with these specific roles. This team shall be dedicated only to the planning and implementation of the employees’ safe return to the office so they can focus well on this specific objective. It’s crucial for this team to make use of guidelines of health authorities, such as the CDC, which released a Resuming Business Toolkit specifically for companies planning to return to the workplace. It includes a Restart Readiness Checklist for resuming business as safe and as healthy as possible. In addition, it offers a Worker Protection Tool for identifying protective measures for employees when interacting with each other and the public.
Listen to Your Employees
Prioritizing safety is a given in preparing for the employees’ return to the office. But it’s also important for the planning committee to consider employee wellness and how it goes beyond fitness membership perks and fruits in the office pantry. This has been a challenge even before the pandemic struck, with Pain Free Working reporting a disconnect between what corporate managements and employees considered good wellness perks. On-site gyms and yoga studio memberships were popular options for managers, but while these are pretty useful, surveys have revealed that employees look for simpler things that can impact their work more holistically. These include things like natural light, better air quality, personalized workspaces, and emotional wellness spaces, which can be incorporated into your return-to-work plan. Simple needs like these can help boost the employees’ morale, productivity, engagement, and loyalty in a time of continuing paranoia.
Implement Returns in Phases
One of the best strategies to implement a safe return to the office is by gradually bringing back employees in phases. This can be done by limiting the number of employees entering the premises at a time, and by providing staggered work times to distribute them in different schedules throughout the day. Back in May, Apple has attempted to bring back employees, allowing those who don’t prefer working remotely to return first to major offices. The company also prioritized the return of employees involved in operations that can’t be run from home, such as managing data centers, deploying software, putting up new products for sale online, and some hardware testing. Nevertheless, as of today, the rest of the Apple employees remain in a remote working setup to maintain everyone’s safety.
Monitor Developments
While it’s still not considered to be completely safe to return to offices, it’s still good to do careful test runs, especially for those who find it difficult to work remotely, and those with critical roles in the office. This way, you can safely monitor developments and come up with solutions for areas that need improvement. The key to careful planning is gradual implementation and modification, while still preparing for the possibility of reoccurrence and closing offices once more.
Here are a few other articles to check out:
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Commercial Leasing Mistakes to Avoid
8 Building Features that Attract Corporate Tenants
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