There are so many factors which influence trends in workspace design and workplace culture, so planning for life after Covid-19 is no easy task for businesses which want to look beyond 2020.
Employees are returning to a very different environment as lockdown eases; an office in which hygiene is top of the priority list and where social distancing principles lie behind almost everything they see.
What is most complicated for employers is how to work out what new trends in the workplace environment will be just a temporary fix, and perhaps stay in place for only a few month as people adjust, and which will be around for the long term?
In fact, some are even asking: do we need an office at all? And that’s a poignant question when you consider how well millions of people have coped with working from home.
It’s easy to make those kind of fast-trigger reactions at a time when most of us are finding it hard to imagine the world as it used to be, before pandemic was the first word in every news report and the first consideration in every business decision.
The hygiene screen
A screen to shield computer users from their colleagues, and to prevent germs moving from one work station to another, is pretty much number one on the list for all businesses. We can expect to see them in offices across the country. But it’s not a completely simple fix. Already we have seen a shortage in the UK of acrylic, leaving some companies with a long wait to order screens in.
Fortunately, there are other types of Plexiglas and Perspex which can be used to provide a barrier. The same would be true even of cardboard screens, a cheap if unattractive, short-term solution for smaller businesses.
Then there’s a decision about how high to make them. The average screen is 600mm high, but we’ve already had orders for 950mm screens which protect users even when they stand up.
Perhaps, just as important a consideration is whether these screens are a gimmick to keep people happy now – or whether they will be part of office design for years to come.
They certainly give employees an extra confidence factor - most have seen them in use at supermarket tills and therefore believe they work. But environmentally speaking they go against the grain in a world where we are trying to reduce the amount of plastic we consume.
Spacing between desks
There is every chance the government will alter social distancing rules in future, perhaps taking the measurement down from 2m down to 1m, a figure recommended by the World Health Organisation. So, making long-term plans for the office based on today’s rules may not make sense.