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Three Considerations for Transitioning Back to the Office

Three Considerations for Transitioning Back to the Office

As we start to transition back to office work, we thought we would address three considerations for transitioning back to the office and opening safely.

Bring your HR policies and procedures up to date

First, you’ll need to consider risk factors that you hadn’t considered before. You’ll want to communicate social distancing policies, make protection equipment available, and over-communicate good hygiene best practices.

If you’re in a building with other companies you’ll need to follow best practices when interfacing with your neighbors. An example of a phased approach, you’ll want to stagger your opening hours because this will put less pressure on public and building services. Before you open, you should ask the building management what procedures they will have in place to ensure everyone’s safety.

Consider your office layout

If you’re in an open-environment office you’ll need to consider how close your employees are to each other. During this period of re-opening, you’ll want to make sure that tables and desks are spaced appropriately. You’ll also want to encourage a relaxed work from home policy, making sure anyone wanting to work from home doesn’t feel pressured to come to the office.

Some of your employees may have a situation where it’s impossible to commit to leaving a work from home setup right away. They might be caring for someone who’s elderly or at risk. The important thing is that re-opening will be different for everyone and you should endeavor to be reasonable as long as the output from home is at a good standard.

Address Disaster Recovery Plans and update them

The final point to understand is supply chains may take some time to ramp up and start supplying again which will impact revenue and sales. Sales will be slower to rebound which is a perfect time to focus on updating your BDR (business disaster recovery) plans to make sure your business is recoverable in a disaster situation.

We hope these three considerations for transitioning back to the office were helpful.