How to Design Your Office Post Covid-19 in India!

With the current need for social distancing and the emergence of video conferencing as the new normal, our offices need to adapt to the changing dynamics of a workplace. 

Conventional offices have focused on increasing the size of the workforce they can house and increasing collaboration with large conference rooms and town hall meetings. 

Below we have listed some key planning concepts and design tips we can use to make offices in India more Covid compliant. 

Incorporate Screening Zones & Gates.

Create a designated screening area before the office entrance where staff and visitors can be checked for symptoms, either electronically or manually by a trained staff member.

All doors should have air curtains to brush off any trapped particles on the surface of the body. Before entering the office, there must be an area where all visitor’s shoes and bags can go through a UV filter for decontamination. 

Practice Good Hygiene.

Offices must maintain good hygiene by having well stocked restrooms, and providing sanitizers and disinfectant wipes at every desk and in every common area. 

Further, they must use an abundance of signage to maintain, reinforce, and promote a hygienic work environment.

Signs should be placed periodically around the main thoroughfares encouraging employees and visitors to wash and sanitize hands multiple times a day, maintain social distancing of six feet or more and uphold high standards of personal hygiene. Every cubicle should have a sign to remind employees to sanitize office supplies before returning them and sanitize their workspaces periodically. 

Make sure all air conditioning units have HEPA filters which help filter out air pollutants. If possible, avoid having a centrally ducted air cooling system which makes spreading air particles between rooms easy. Instead one can opt for high wall units or even a VRV ducted system which gives you the option to shut off room units when not in use. 

De-Densify your Office and Make Social Distancing Easy!

In most offices with tightly spaced benches, maintaining social distance will be a challenge. However, management can begin to de-densify the workspace by scheduling only part of the workforce to come into the office while the rest work from home. This will leave enough space in the office for employees to occupy alternating desks. One must also remember to avoid having employees working facing each other where they may more easily spread germs. To further reduce the spread of germs, consider building partitions around each individual workspace, high enough to provide a physical barrier from surrounding benches.

Cushman Wakefield encourages social distancing with the introduction of their custom carpets that highlights a six foot radius around every desk which others are encouraged not to step into.

Single Occupancy Rooms.

While partitions and assigning alternate desks during the de-densification process are temporary solutions, companies must turn to more permanent solutions to optimize space. To that effect, single occupancy rooms go a long way to help employees maintain social distance and can reduce the number of unoccupied desks cluttering up limited space. A single room of this size should easily fit one employee, a desk and chair with enough space to maneuver in and out of the room easily.

In the past, offices have had a few cubicles for the purpose for making calls, but now it will become more common. 

Make a Touch Free Workplace.

To avoid cross contamination via high contact surfaces, one should introduce automation to eliminate the existence of such surfaces entirely. Doors handles, light switches, faucets, toilet flushes, and toilet seats are some of the most common areas from which one may come in contact with germs. Simple measures such as adopting automatic doors, doorless restrooms or restroom doors with foot handles, occupancy sensor lights, touchless soap and sanitizer dispensers, motion sensor flushes, and self cleaning toilet seats go a long way in creating a more hygienic workspace.  

Coordinate Cleaning Schedules.

Cleaning schedules can determine the success of a workspace’s efforts to maintain a clean and hygienic work environment. Plan employee shift changes and break times to coincide with spot cleaning and deep cleaning schedules. Professional cleaning shouldn’t just be limited to workstations, but should also extend to conference rooms, cafeterias, common areas and reception desks.

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