Redefining Workplace

 As a result of the recent pandemic, we are experiencing a public health emergency. At this juncture it is critical that everyone – employers, employees and the self employed – takes steps to keep themselves safe. Organisations, big or small, have a legal responsibility to protect employees and guests from risk to their health and safety. And as we navigate the evolving realities of the pandemic, we are looking ahead to what the future of the workplace holds for all of us. And it is vital we redefine the workplace. While physical distancing, no doubt, is going to be the new normal, collaboration and human connection will remain more important than ever. Increasing sanitisation, prioritizing personal space and implementing behavioural signage will play a crucial role in ensuring that employees at your organisation can continue working in safe and healthy environments.    

There are a few steps organisations need to consider redesigning in their business set up. Apart from increasing the frequency of hand-washing and surface cleaning, they must make every reasonable effort to comply with the social distancing guidelines (2m distance or 1m with risk mitigations) set out by the government, say, keeping the activity time involved as short as possible, using sneeze guards or transparent barriers to separate employees from one another, operating with back-to-back or side-to-side working and implementing behavioural signage to emphasise the importance of distancing and hygiene. It is of the utmost importance to understand that the design of your workspaces can not only impact the experience of your employees, but their health and safety, as well.

In these unpredictable and unsettling times, managing a workforce will be a great challenge. Though this might not seem to be a smooth transition, but if you could manage to get things going then it could maximize productivity and save you a lot of stress down the line. So, the moot question that begs an immediate answer is: How exactly do we follow the recommendation of social distancing without losing productivity or for that matter exposing the business to unnecessary risk?