As many workers throughout the United States return to the office, COVID-19 safety at work has become a top priority. Initially, many companies simply sent their employees home to work remotely in response to mandatory shutdowns implemented in various states across the country.
Productivity was diminished in many cases because so many of us have difficulty maintaining our momentum when we work remotely. There are too many distractions, and the synergy of working with colleagues in the same physical space is lacking.
Now, with the approval of promising vaccines, companies are cautiously bringing their employees back to the office. One of the first things that most of them do is to itemize the safety protocols that have been published on the CDC, state, and local government websites.
This volume of information is a great deal to process, with many office managers overwhelmed by the prospect of training their employees in all aspects of COVID-19 safety at work. With so much fear in our society, it is easy to lose sight of the basics of office safety when we feel overwhelmed by all the “what could happen” warnings.
Cubiture wants to alleviate this mental stress for our customers by helping to establish the basics of a healthy work environment. While safety is something every employee must practice individually, this becomes very problematic if the office is not configured with safety in mind.
In the early days of the pandemic, medical experts determined that a minimum distance of 6 feet between persons was required to minimize transmission of the virus. This is one of the first challenges that a company faces when reopening its doors. Prior to the shutdowns last year, very few offices positioned every workstation at a minimum distance of 6 feet. Many, in fact, relied heavily on shared space that encouraged collaboration between employees. When the pandemic struck, and companies sent their employees home, these workstations remained in place, untouched, behind closed doors.
Now, with employees returning, the first order of business is to establish a safe distance between every person. This can be very challenging in small corporate suites with limited square footage. Teams who shared worktables can no longer sit together as they did before. Even with masks, close distances can still lead to COVID transmission among colleagues. Without the mandatory 6 feet of space, all other measures for COVID-19 safety at work are compromised.
Cubiture’s solution is to reconfigure all office fixtures and furniture so that workstations are separated by at least 6 feet of distance. While this may seem impossible to those operating in small offices, it is not. Cubiture specializes in space utilization, and we have a long history of working creatively in small offices that had become practically unnavigable with clutter.
While reconfiguration may require the replacement of shared worktables, large desks, and damaged cubicles, we can minimize these costs with our office furniture buyback and liquidation programs. For others, we can store office furniture for a reasonable fee so that it can be reinstalled after a critical mass of employees is inoculated against the disease, and COVID-19 safety at work protocols are finally relaxed.
Cubiture further reduces the cost of office furniture reconfiguration by first listening to the client, understanding their needs and unique challenges. Next, we move to the drawing board and develop a free office layout design for any organization requesting a quote. This rendering shows the position of every workstation, table, and desk in the office. Drawn to scale, it also shows the distance between each station as well as the location of portable partition walls and desk shields that protect workers when moving around the office.
These partitions and desk shields play a vital role in maintaining COVID-19 safety at work because they create safety barriers between employees who must interact with colleagues at their desks. In such instances where social distancing cannot be followed, a physical barrier works to minimize the spread of the virus.
While the numerous protocols required for COVID-19 safety at work may appear overwhelming at first, a healthy work environment is nonetheless well within the reach of every organization. By partnering with Cubiture to first reconfiguring the office, and then educating the workforce in individual safety precautions, any business can begin to move forward in 2021 – focused on business goals instead of office layouts. Cubiture stands ready to help with both ideas and pragmatic solutions. Call us today at 713-412-0900 to get started.