Is this the End of the Modern Open Office?

The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted our daily lives in a multitude of ways. Many schools were closed for the remainder of the year, businesses were forced to have employees work from home (or temporarily close), and restaurants and bars have had to limit operations to curbside pickup only if able to.

Now that states across the country are beginning to open back up and stay at home orders are being lifted, a cautious approach is being taken to open everything back up.  Restaurants have strict guidelines they must follow, and schools are planning ways to open safely in the fall. 

For businesses, the modern open office concept promotes a chic environment for collaboration and convenience. Complete with in-house refreshments, standing desks with room for all an employee needs and the ability to work openly with colleagues, open office concepts have been the standard in modern spaces.

But as companies begin to reopen and allow their employees to return to work, things will likely change. Open office concepts could even disappear altogether.

An unlikely perk to a prospective employee’s job hunt, a sneeze guard, may be the new norm. A plexiglass barrier to separate workspaces is just one of many ideas being considered as businesses plan their return to the office. Other post-pandemic amenities may include desks with built-in hand sanitizer units, air filters that push air down rather than up, outdoor meeting spaces to allow collaboration without the fear of viral transmission and windows that actually open for increased air flow.

Businesses are trying to figure out the best way to reconfigure their open office concepts. Design and furniture companies that have been hired to help make over offices to increase their safety in a world with coronavirus have said workplaces are heading back toward the idea of privacy. As businesses from small start-ups to large corporations begin the process of reopening, the debate is whether or not any kind of work setup will actually make the workplace any safer.

Knoll is an office furniture company that is experiencing engagement from clients who are anxious and relying on them to come up with ways to make the workplace safer. “We are not infectious disease experts, we are simply furniture people,” said Tracy D. Wymer, Vice President for workplace at Knoll.

Actual disease experts warn that a virus-free office environment is unlikely. “A core message is, do not expect your risk goes down to zero,” Dr. Rajneesh Behal, Internal Medicine Physician and Chief Quality Officer for One Medical advises.

According to Dr. Lisa Winston, Epidemiologist at Zuckerberg San Francisco General at the University of California, San Francisco says that much of what we know about disease transmission in the workplace is based off of studies that focused on the transmission of the flu, which shares some similarities to the coronavirus. “We know that flu spreads in workplaces among healthy working adults,” Dr. Winston said. In a 2016 analysis of various papers and studies around the world, it was found that about 16 percent of overall flu transmission occurs in an office setting.

Research suggests that one of the best ways to combat the transmission of viruses in the workplace is for an employer to provide paid sick leave to employees that suggests they stay home if they’re feeling ill. According to Dr. Winston, another way to lower the risk of virus transmission is to have “fewer people in a space.”

The idea of having less people occupying one space in an office setting goes against everything that current open office concepts promote. First gaining popularity in the late 1990’s during the dot-com boom, open office plans prioritized creativity and collaboration. It also was a way for business to fit more employees into an expensive office space.

The idea of creating a virus-free office space is unachievable. That is why Knoll, the furniture design company, is taking the approach of trying to make employees “feel” safer, rather than promising something that they can’t.

By taking this approach, it means no more shared desks, elbow-to-elbow seating or common areas where people collaborate on projects over coffee. It means materials like copper will be used as they are an unfriendly surface for germs. It also means ventilation systems where the airflow is pushed down rather than up.

Vancouver business Mobify, occupies a space that is the exact concept of the modern workplace. The company builds online storefronts for major retailers and has 40 employees who share an open office workspace with other start-ups.  Their office is complete with side-by-side seating that can occupy 100 people at full capacity. There are areas to conduct meetings and play ping-pong. 

Now, according to Igor Faletksi, the company’s chief executive, “It’s less about fun and more about safety.”

Mobify is contemplating allowing employees work from home, as well as moving their headquarters to a different building with better ventilation. “People want to have safe collaboration,” he said.

Other considerations companies are exploring include the return of the cubicle, and the sneeze guard. The sneeze guard, which are being marketed as “Cough and Sneeze Protection Screens” by some companies, are the see through version of the cubicle. These guards are already being used in banks and grocery stores, but are starting to see a push in corporate office buildings.

Dr. Susan Huang, Medical Director of Epidemiology and Infection Prevention at the University of California, Irvine has been using tall, plastic partitions as a barrier long before the global coronavirus pandemic. She admits the barriers originally “weren’t designed for coronavirus,” but instead used as a way to maintain a sense of collaboration without creating noise.  In the era of COVID-19, the partitions now serve a second unintended purpose – to protect from germs.

Dr. Huang acknowledges that workplace safety would require more than just plastic barriers. In a meeting conducted at her lab, which just reopened, Dr. Huang distributed masks and hand sanitizer to all employees. “I had to tell them, ‘You’re going to wear masks all day long.’”

She said she had to tell them “how to do it right and that they had to do it.” Dr. Huang remembered also instructing employees not to touch their masks without using hand sanitizer first.

With all of the planning and consideration being spent on how to make the office space safer, in the end the solution may just be to allow employees to continue to work from home. This strategy effectively accomplishes two goals: keeping employees safe, and saving money.  Susan Stick, General Counsel at Evernote says moving to home offices “has worked really great. You can’t put that genie back into the bottle.”

Story via The New York Times