Depending on the type of work, some employers are finding it very difficult to entice employees back to the office after a long period of remote work during the pandemic. To convince employees to stay in their current role and come back to the office, even part time, employers have begun investing in capital improvements to their workspaces to promote social distancing and inter-personal hygiene. Below are a few sample projects and techniques being used in New York City:
1. Spatial Reconfiguration
Many companies used the pandemic as a time to consult with interior designers and architects to spatially reconfigure their office space to ensure a minimum of 6’ social distancing space for all employees. This work often requires some slight reconfiguration of existing partitions to provide proper workstation layouts, but is a very cost-effective way of ensuring employee heath and safety while not sacrificing performance or output, to the extent performance or output are driven by in-office work. However, these spatial reconfiguration projects always require downtime in offices that often lead to employers performing some additional upgrades and renovations to maximize the downtime. For other upgrades and renovations, please review our blog post on Remodeling Your Office here (hyperlink this to the other blog post).
2. Hotel Offices
Home employers decided to make some positions fully remote, but retained office space for “hoteling,” which is essentially a private office rental system historically used in multi-office corporations for guests and visitors. In the current iteration, some employers have dedicated over half of their available office space to “hotel” offices, which aren’t assigned to any individual workers. Accord Contracting is building a new 15,000 SF office space for a national accounting firm that holds half of its available offices for hotel guests. This hotel office structure allows more people to work remote while providing a space for people to work during “busy season” or collaborate on complex projects. It also has a social benefit of bringing people together on occasion for team building activities that are often made more difficult with remote work given the onset of “Zoom Fatigue.”
3. Touchless Appliances
Many offices have focused on upgrades that affect the day-to-day activities and movements of things. For example, CB Insights has put out a graphic entitled “The New Tech-Enabled Office Journey” that takes people through a journey of what the new office environment may look like. To some, it’s very exciting and a testament to human ingenuity and resolve to fight through a global pandemic and come roaring back stronger than before. To others, it seems a bit too invasive and futuristic. Fortunately for all, no one design is best and every office can make informed decisions on what they want for their space.
For example, ANZ hired Accord as a General Contractor to install touchless Sloan faucets and soap dispensers in the bathrooms and pantry, touchless Kohler Flushometers for all urinals and toilets, pre-entry wellness check centers at elevator entrances, and HEPA filters in all private offices and meeting rooms. There was no social distancing sensors, no advanced remote collaboration tools, no voice-enabled vending or enhanced cybersecurity components to the fit-out. The building in which ANZ Bank has its offices also installed a workplace occupancy sensor (Density) to monitor total building occupancy and risk of spread. Other tenants had these workplace occupancy sensors installed in their own offices for more stringent monitoring.
4. Touchless Entry Testing to Minimize Spread
Many workplaces require some combination of a current vaccination status or weekly testing for all unvaccinated individuals. Even with vaccination and testing, many workplaces still require guests to have their temperature taken upon entry. This is a very time intensive and potentially expensive endeavor if someone needs to be paid full time to act as a formal COVID Safety Monitor. Some workplaces like ANZ Bank elected to install touchless automatic temperature stations at the elevator entrances as discussed above. If a personnel’s temperature reads above a preset amount, the station will alert them that they are not permitted inside the office and that they need to obtain a negative COVID test before they can re-enter. This minimizes potential contact with COVID-positive personnel and help prevent further spread at the workplace.
5. Antimicrobial Surface Coverings
Some high traffic buildings in Manhattan have elected to retrofit all of their existing door pulls and elevator buttons with self-cleaning or antimicrobial covers. One brand seen in Class A office buildings is Nanotouch (formerly nanoseptic), which provides self-cleaning pads and adhesives that “continuously oxidize organic contaminants at the microscopic level,” according to their own website. Another common product used is Silver Defender, which is a protective film that can be applied to surfaces, such as faucets, railings, elevator buttons, etc. that both physically protects the surface it’s covering while “treating” the surface of the film. As the name would indicate, Silver Defender’s active ingredient is silver, which has natural antibacterial properties by essentially puncturing bacterial membranes with its natural ionic charges.
6. HEPA Filters
HEPA filters have become very popular with the onset of COVID-19. While it sounds futuristic or high tech, HEPA is merely an acronym for “High-Efficiency Particulate Air,” which the Department of Energy defines as any air filter that removes at least 99.97% of all dust, pollen, mold, bacteria, and any other airborne particles with a size of 0.3 microns or greater. This technology was standardized back in 1983 but has had a major resurgence with COVID-19 due to the renewed focus on air quality. Some offices have focused on upgrading the filters in their existing AC units to HEPA filters, while others are purchasing smaller portable HEPA filter units for each individual office and conference room to ensure that the air inside each of these rooms remains active and filtered.
Would you like to make some social distancing renovations?
Depending on the type of work, some employers are finding it very difficult to entice employees back to the office after a long period of remote work during the pandemic. To convince employees to stay in their current role and come back to the office, even part time, employers have begun investing in capital improvements to their workspaces to promote social distancing and inter-personal hygiene. Below are a few sample projects and techniques being used in New York City:
1. Spatial Reconfiguration
Many companies used the pandemic as a time to consult with interior designers and architects to spatially reconfigure their office space to ensure a minimum of 6’ social distancing space for all employees. This work often requires some slight reconfiguration of existing partitions to provide proper workstation layouts, but is a very cost-effective way of ensuring employee heath and safety while not sacrificing performance or output, to the extent performance or output are driven by in-office work. However, these spatial reconfiguration projects always require downtime in offices that often lead to employers performing some additional upgrades and renovations to maximize the downtime. For other upgrades and renovations, please review our blog post on Remodeling Your Office here (hyperlink this to the other blog post).
2. Hotel Offices
Home employers decided to make some positions fully remote, but retained office space for “hoteling,” which is essentially a private office rental system historically used in multi-office corporations for guests and visitors. In the current iteration, some employers have dedicated over half of their available office space to “hotel” offices, which aren’t assigned to any individual workers. Accord Contracting is building a new 15,000 SF office space for a national accounting firm that holds half of its available offices for hotel guests. This hotel office structure allows more people to work remote while providing a space for people to work during “busy season” or collaborate on complex projects. It also has a social benefit of bringing people together on occasion for team building activities that are often made more difficult with remote work given the onset of “Zoom Fatigue.”
3. Touchless Appliances
Many offices have focused on upgrades that affect the day-to-day activities and movements of things. For example, CB Insights has put out a graphic entitled “The New Tech-Enabled Office Journey” that takes people through a journey of what the new office environment may look like. To some, it’s very exciting and a testament to human ingenuity and resolve to fight through a global pandemic and come roaring back stronger than before. To others, it seems a bit too invasive and futuristic. Fortunately for all, no one design is best and every office can make informed decisions on what they want for their space.
For example, ANZ hired Accord as a General Contractor to install touchless Sloan faucets and soap dispensers in the bathrooms and pantry, touchless Kohler Flushometers for all urinals and toilets, pre-entry wellness check centers at elevator entrances, and HEPA filters in all private offices and meeting rooms. There was no social distancing sensors, no advanced remote collaboration tools, no voice-enabled vending or enhanced cybersecurity components to the fit-out. The building in which ANZ Bank has its offices also installed a workplace occupancy sensor (Density) to monitor total building occupancy and risk of spread. Other tenants had these workplace occupancy sensors installed in their own offices for more stringent monitoring.
4. Touchless Entry Testing to Minimize Spread
Many workplaces require some combination of a current vaccination status or weekly testing for all unvaccinated individuals. Even with vaccination and testing, many workplaces still require guests to have their temperature taken upon entry. This is a very time intensive and potentially expensive endeavor if someone needs to be paid full time to act as a formal COVID Safety Monitor. Some workplaces like ANZ Bank elected to install touchless automatic temperature stations at the elevator entrances as discussed above. If a personnel’s temperature reads above a preset amount, the station will alert them that they are not permitted inside the office and that they need to obtain a negative COVID test before they can re-enter. This minimizes potential contact with COVID-positive personnel and help prevent further spread at the workplace.
5. Antimicrobial Surface Coverings
Some high traffic buildings in Manhattan have elected to retrofit all of their existing door pulls and elevator buttons with self-cleaning or antimicrobial covers. One brand seen in Class A office buildings is Nanotouch (formerly nanoseptic), which provides self-cleaning pads and adhesives that “continuously oxidize organic contaminants at the microscopic level,” according to their own website. Another common product used is Silver Defender, which is a protective film that can be applied to surfaces, such as faucets, railings, elevator buttons, etc. that both physically protects the surface it’s covering while “treating” the surface of the film. As the name would indicate, Silver Defender’s active ingredient is silver, which has natural antibacterial properties by essentially puncturing bacterial membranes with its natural ionic charges.
6. HEPA Filters
HEPA filters have become very popular with the onset of COVID-19. While it sounds futuristic or high tech, HEPA is merely an acronym for “High-Efficiency Particulate Air,” which the Department of Energy defines as any air filter that removes at least 99.97% of all dust, pollen, mold, bacteria, and any other airborne particles with a size of 0.3 microns or greater. This technology was standardized back in 1983 but has had a major resurgence with COVID-19 due to the renewed focus on air quality. Some offices have focused on upgrading the filters in their existing AC units to HEPA filters, while others are purchasing smaller portable HEPA filter units for each individual office and conference room to ensure that the air inside each of these rooms remains active and filtered.