Through what has been termed ‘The Great Global Pause’, the COVID-19 pandemic has compelled people around the world to reevaluate how they live for the sake of the collective good. In North America, we’ve arrived at a critical juncture in addressing how to return safely to our daily lives, including where and how we work. What we’re learning from our global clients who have begun and continue their return to work, is that rebuilding employee resilience is crucial at this point, even more so than focusing on recovery. The key to rebuilding employee resilience during times of crisis is rebuilding employee trust.

As businesses are gearing up again, can employees trust that their jobs are safe? As employees return to office settings (albeit it as a component of a variety of locales) will employees feel safe in our new workplaces?

Our experiences with COVID-19 have created fear and anxiety on both the individual and collective scales, resulting in a general erosion of trust within all aspects of society.

According to a recent article in Forbes, “…over the last decade, there has been a tremendous erosion of the public trust — in politicians, in the media, and beyond. The big exception is our employers, which turn out to be by far the most trusted institutions in our lives.” If this is the case, instilling a high level of trust in employees is most crucial at this time as we all explore what it means to be safe in a new COVID-19 world.

Working in our ‘new normal’ will mean that the employee experience will emphasize the need for resiliency through communication, transparency and optics as necessary first steps. As we transition back to work, employees will be watching how employers are responding to changing expectations and this will likely translate to a critical factor in retaining existing talent and recruiting future talent. Employers will be expected to demonstrate care for employees through their actions by putting their safety and well-being first.

From companies moving online practically overnight, to organizations massively restructuring business models to cope, the current pandemic has forced companies to adapt and pivot on the fly. We now know COVID-19 will not be disappearing anytime soon. As organizations learn to conduct business under increasingly uncertain circumstances, employee resiliency and resilient leadership are equally as important. To recover in our current environment simply isn’t enough.

Instilling trust in employees begins with visibility and transparency through timely communication. As processes and expectations continue to change, it’s important that employees have a clear and up-to-date understanding of how their company is moving forward as opposed to having them fill voids in communication with misinformation and assumptions. This works on many levels but perhaps most important now is the fact that employees need clarity as to how companies will address prevention of the spread of the virus and consequently, workplace health, safety and wellness.

According to the Global Wellness Institute, workplace wellness was valued at $47.5 billion prior to COVID-19. The desire for workplace wellness will only continue to increase with the return to offices where wellness will be intricately tied to prevention. According to ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers), monitoring air quality and humidity will help prevent the spread of the virus. Workspace analytics technology provides the ability to monitor air quality and control humidity, aligning it not only with WELL and fitwel guidelines, but also the recent needs we’ve uncovered with COVID-19.

Staying healthy and safe in a COVID-19 world requires that we put people first. When it comes to our workplaces, companies will need to focus on the employee experience to not only keep talent safe but also reinforce a culture of trust through transparent communication. A company’s success will depend upon resilient leadership that supports employees to move beyond recovery and become more resilient themselves.

Watch our free webinar to learn more: How to Manage the Workspace During the COVID Crisis.

Across North America, we’re seeing companies rethinking office life as virus restrictions are beginning to ease. Pre-COVID workplaces composed of shared seating, open plans and collaboration spaces are getting makeovers to account for the new social distancing era. We’re learning from our global clients and partners that a safe return to work is dependent on methodical measures to prevent a second wave of infections. While this process is very much a work in progress, it’s clear that the workplaces we’ll be returning to in North America will look and feel very different from the ones we left in March.

While cost saving measures may be high priority as a result of the global work from home experiment and impending recession brought on by COVID-19, the needs of employees have to come first. In a tenuous business environment where customers and clients are reexamining their priorities, people matter more than ever in the new workplace. Keeping employees safe and healthy, while offering flexibility in how they choose to work, will allow companies to recruit and retain top talent. With many employees opting to work from home to some degree, this will likely balance out requirements of future office space.

As we move forward, we’ll likely see a combination of in-office shared and assigned seating, along with employees working from home — more so than ever before.

50% of the workforce will likely be working across a Total Workplace Ecosystem balancing office, home and third spaces. ~ Cushman & Wakefield

Only 12% of people want to continue to work from home full-time, or are looking for a balance between the two. The amount varies by industry. On average, most employees want to work from home two-to-three days or less. ~ Gensler

Evaluating Our Current Workplaces

By understanding the needs of our clients and the challenges that lie ahead for them as we enter a new world of work, we put our heads together to think about how future workplaces will differ from our current arrangements as we transition back to offices.

Tomorrow’s workplaces will also require a balance between how companies can reduce costs and how they can provide a safe in-office work environment for instances where working from home is not a preferable option. COVID-19 has drastically redefined what a safe and healthy office environment looks like. It has also accelerated the evolution of the workplace, particularly with how technology can help stop the spread of infectious disease.

Decision makers are asking us: How can technology be used to keep office occupants safe and what can we do now to start preparing for our new normal?

COVID-19 Workspace Monitoring

Workspace analytics technology provides the ability to monitor employees and see where people are clustering. Having employees too close together will put their health and the organization at risk. At Relogix, our solution provides an ecosystem of products specifically designed to collect, gather, secure and share the information CRE professionals need to inform real estate strategy, monitor change, and measure impact. Our technology can help companies ensure spaces are used according to new social distancing protocols and the data accrued can demonstrate that a company took every precaution to protect all office occupants.

• Maintain humidity levels between 40 – 60%
• Increase fresh air intake to maintain positive air pressure
• Open dampers 100% to push inside air out and eliminate air recirculation

• Establish clean desk protocols to support effective and frequent cleaning of surfaces
• Enable cleaning staff to clean work surfaces during the workday as required
• Plan a staged recall strategy for return to work e.g. people unable to work from home, critical ‘in office’ functions return first,
• Pre-plan employee seating with a 6 ft radius (consider every 3 seats apart and avoid back-to-back or face-to-face seating that is < 6 ft apart, even with dividers)
• Increase occupancy slowly e.g. start at 20 or 30% with gradual increase and support employees who can and want to continue to work from home
• Temporarily minimize shared desk seating to mitigate possible cross contamination

Watch our free webinar to learn more: How to Manage the Workspace During the COVID Crisis. COVID-19 has accelerated the work from home movement and many organizations will likely embrace out of office work moving forward. As a result, traditional office spaces will no longer be central locations for work but rather, a component of a variety of locales. Our technology can help you be better prepared to support the health, safety and well-being of your office occupants as we reshape our workplaces for the new normal.