Commercial property firm Cushman & Wakefield’s office blueprint
divides workers to conquer the coronavirus.
By Steve
Brown 5:00 AM on May 16,
2020
When you finally make
it back to the office, you may not recognize the place.
Expect less crowding,
more instruction signs and a reduction in desktop clutter as companies adjust
their workplaces for a post-pandemic world.
“People have to feel
safe and taken care of when they return to the office,” said Cushman &
Wakefield’s Jeroen Lokerse. “For a certain amount of time — at least several
months — we are going to have to ensure social distancing.”
That will be quite a
challenge in many offices. In the last decade, worker densities have
dramatically increased. Workers sit closer together and share more space than
ever.
“We’ve squeezed too
many desks into the office,” said Lokerse, who heads Cushman & Wakefield’s
Netherlands office. “We are going to have to create a workspace for our people
where there are fewer desks.”
Lokerse is leading
the effort at the global commercial real estate firm to create what the company
calls the 6 Feet Office. The new guidelines are designed to help businesses
reduce the chance of coronavirus infection among employees.
“We asked ourselves
what was needed to work in a safe environment,” Lokerse said. “We started to
study it and came up with the protocols you see today.”
Cushman &
Wakefield is rolling out the changes in its own offices and advising clients
worldwide.
The new office
layouts spread out workstations and use dynamic visual signs to help employees
keep their distance.
Desks are surrounded
by personal space circles. Walkways in the office become one way. In elevators,
pads show riders where to stand for the maximum social distancing.
“Changing habits and
behaviors is difficult,” Lokerse said. “But after two or three days, people are
following the rules.
“Once you get it into
people’s minds, you have a safer office environment.”
The workplace changes
Cushman & Wakefield has designed also include glass screens between
workstations and disposable desktop covers that can get tossed when workers go
home.
Workstations are
decluttered so cleaning crews can disinfect at the end of the workday. “In the
past you would hope your desk was cleaned,” Lokerse said. “Now it has to be
kept clean.”
And that means no
eating while you work and no trays of cookies on the counter. Cushman &
Wakefield also suggests that coffee pots should be removed.
“At a lot of
companies, people eat behind their desk,” he said. “That’s not the best place
to eat, and we have to think differently about it now.
“We used to have
shared keyboards,” Lokerse said. “Now everyone has their own keyboard and takes
it with them."
Companies can
accommodate the lower workspace densities by allowing employees to work from
home some of the time.
“We are going to find
a better way to work: partially from home and partially from the office.”
The other alterations
— new signs, floor markers, dividers, etc. — represent a negligible expense for
most firms, Lokerse said.
“The total cost of
changing the office equals one to four weeks’ rent,” he said. “Nothing we do is
largely expensive.”
Office employers are
scrambling to get ready to open back up.
More than
three-fourths of financial firm executives surveyed last month by
PricewaterhouseCoopers said they plan to change workplace safety measures and
requirements. And 65% said they would reconfigure worksites to promote physical
distancing.
More than half of the
CFOs surveyed said they plan to change shifts and/or alternate crews to reduce
exposure to the virus.
So far, Cushman &
Wakefield has gotten a good response to its proposals.
“We are helping
dozens of companies right now,” said Cushman & Wakefield’s Peter van
Woerkum. “There is an eagerness to adapt their offices as soon as possible.
“We prepared this
exactly as companies were thinking about returning to business,” he said.
“Everyone wants to get back to work."
Everything from
propping doors open to changing elevator systems is being considered to reduce
employee contact with potentially contaminated surfaces.
“I talked to one New
York landlord who is hiring a bellboy just to push the elevator buttons,” van
Woerkum said.
He expects the
changes to be long lasting — even when the pandemic is past.
“The way we were
doing things was not optimal, and we can do better.”
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