Member Article

COVID-19 should be forcing employers to examine their office space

Amid the worst global pandemic for over 300 years employers must review their office space and its suitability for workers.

The country continues to wait for positive news over when lockdown restrictions may be relaxed and in what form. But whatever form it takes we need to understand that, at least in the near-future, life cannot return the same way we left it just a few months ago. The workplace for all workers must adapt to accommodate the social distancing criteria to ensure employees are as safe as possible from COVID-19.

Since the Economic crisis in 2007 we have seen more than a decade of shrinking workspaces and a massive trend toward co working and open plan offices enabling more people to be accommodated in a much smaller amount of office space also negating the need for expensive partitioning to create private offices. This trend of collaboration may negate the need to invest large amounts of capital into a building and may reduce the per person cost significantly but at what costs to the workers? This style of working can create hotbeds for a virus to spread quickly and easily across teams.

The rapid and brutal onset of COVID-19 is forcing employers to immediately review their own biosecurity measures, what specifically are they doing. If staff are shoe horned into areas of 30 sq. ft per person, a typical average, or thrust amongst a cohort of other companies in a large open plan co-working offices then can that employer really claim to be implementing social distancing policies to keep their teams safe?

Can you really implement biosecurity policies in a shared demise when you have no authority over the behaviour of the companies you are sharing with? Private, self-contained offices will have more flexibility and ability to enforce critical bio security protocols in line with Government policy to help get people back to work.

MSO Workspace supply, on average, 40% more space per person than the market leader; however, since the onset of the UK Government lockdown we are currently reviewing our own Bio security and space allocation. Consequently, we will be bringing new products to market in the next few weeks designed to maximise the safety of our occupants. These innovations will be available to our current occupants and competitors alike.

To ease the world economy back into flow we need to work together. We need offices to reopen but only when it is safe to do so without the risk of an immediate second peak. For that to happen, we need real change. Change in the office layouts, distancing and perhaps in the immediate future remote working and private offices.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Jonathan .