From air purifiers, to hands-free technology, face masks and ultraviolet phone sanitizing stations — the workplace is shaping up to look very different after the coronavirus pandemic subsides.
While it’s still unclear when Connecticut’s non-essential businesses will return to the office, many Greater Hartford employers are already thinking about how to implement staggered shifts, extend workspace dividers, reconfigure seating and purchase adaptable furniture and technology to boost safety protocols and raise confidence in the workplace.
“Things that were great a few months ago will now be looked at in a different light,” Shana Schlossberg, CEO and founder of Hartford co-working space Upward, said in a recent MetroHartford Alliance webinar on the future of work following COVID-19. “Raising confidence and transparency will be so important.”
Schlossberg says the health crisis has already forced some small startups and large companies leasing overflow space at Upward’s 34,000-square-foot Stilts Building facility downtown to downsize. But she’s still confident Upward will be able to fill unoccupied space as it looks to adopt new office technologies, and reconfigure existing workstations and common areas to meet new safety standards and tenant needs.
“The larger clients will still need this type of space for additional space,” she added. “It just may change how they use it or when they use it.”
Employers are eager to learn which new mandates already established for essential companies will stick around after the economy reopens, said Joe Brennan, CEO and president of the Connecticut Business & Industry Association (CBIA), who is also a member of an advisory group tasked with coming up with recommendations on how to reopen Connecticut businesses.
Social distancing will continue to be the new norm and current guidelines suggest office environments may need to enforce the use of face masks when stay-at-home orders are lifted, Brennan said.
That raises many questions for employers, including whether they will be required to supply masks for workers. There are also concerns about employers’ role in testing workers and whether employees more susceptible to the negative effects of COVID-19 might be required to telecommute for a longer period of time.
“You need to have adequate testing to open up the workforce,” Brennan said.
There are also challenges associated with keeping public gathering spaces — like lunch rooms, stairwells and parking garages — safe.
The burden of these potential issues could shy employers away from returning to the office, Brennan said.
“These are all questions that need to be answered but employers need to be looking at their workspace and trying to determine how they will adapt to guidelines that will likely be coming down,” Brennan said. “If you can conduct business remotely … then I think you will continue to see that.”
Office changes
The potential for crowded work environments is creating anxiety for many corporate office tenants and building owners across Connecticut, area brokers and designers say.
Rebecca Sarkosi, an associate and director of interior design at Farmington’s QA+M Architecture, says early talks with clients suggest the open office trend will change dramatically as employees take steps to limit the spread of COVID-19.
Large communal areas previously used for lounge, small meeting or cafe space could be converted to dedicated or temporary workstations as employers increase physical distance between employees, Sarkosi said. Employees may also be spread out across workstations previously meant for future hires, or others recently furloughed.
Despite the speculation, Sarkosi says her clients have yet to make any bold office moves or long-term changes.
“How offices might change depends on many factors including size of staff and physical space, office culture and what the office space is like currently,” she said.
Larger corporate offices, she said, will undergo the biggest shifts as those companies have the capital to invest in new safety measures, such as new air-filtration systems, doorless bathrooms and locker rooms, additional cubicle panels, and hands-free faucets, water fountains, trash cans, recycling machines and paper-towel dispensers, among other high-tech devices. UV phone-sanitizing stations and mounted hand sanitizers should also be widely available to office workers, Sarkosi said.
At smaller offices, she said a cheaper solution to promote social distancing would be adjusting the direction of computer screens, or implementing glass or acrylic work dividers to maintain a sense of visual openness.
“The overall better hygiene-related design elements and practices will serve us all well for reducing common colds and seasonal flu,” Sarkosi said. “We will learn how much we can benefit from being agile and adaptive in our built environments and will emerge on the other side of this with increased productivity and a renewed perspective.”
Lamont’s take
When it comes to framing employer concerns, Gov. Ned Lamont pictures the workplace at his former telecom business.
“This is just Ned talking back when I had the cable company,” the governor said in a recent interview with HBJ about reopening Connecticut’s economy. “I would probably let half of my people come in and half work remotely, so that there was not a lot of overlap.”
Safety restrictions on non-essential companies will be eased as the statewide infection rate goes down significantly, but residents should expect some form of social distancing to remain a necessary measure at least through the fall, Lamont said.
“At that point you can start relaxing some of those restrictions,” he said. “But if you have a preexisting condition, if you’re over the age of 70, probably some of those requirements will stay in place even longer.”
Lamont said his mandate calling for non-essential businesses to remain closed until at least May 20 represents a timeline when he would like the state’s 50-member business/health advisory group to submit its recommendations on reopening commerce in a safe and healthy manner. The governor says barber shops and nail salons will be among the first businesses to open on May 20. Restaurants could be limited to takeout and outdoor table service at that point, and other industries will reopen later in varying degrees.
Connecticut, he said, is making major progress toward reopening as the state has been steadily increasing its testing capacity and stockpiling critical personal protection equipment (PPE) and reliable healthcare data.
The governor declined to speculate if recent restrictions imposed on essential businesses — such as requiring face masks — will be required for all employees when Connecticut returns to work. Lamont said he would like to hear from his advisory group first.
“I know everybody is ready to go, everybody is ready to get back to work,” he said. “But the risk of opening too early and having a second round of this is something that scares the hell out of every governor in the country — except for Georgia,” Lamont joked.
Joe Cooper is HBJ’s web editor and real estate writer. He pens “The Real Deal” column about commercial real estate.
