The government has set out its “roadmap” to ease the current Covid-19 restrictions, that supports a return to work, providing it is safe to do so. Employers need to plan now for what is likely to be staged return to the workplace over what could be prolonged periods. As workplace consultants and space strategy experts, Wylde are here to help guide you through the challenging realities of implementing social distancing with the return to work.
Employers have a duty of care to identify and manage risks to ensure that the workplace is sufficiently safe to return to. We understand that keeping employees safe and secure in the workplace is a daunting task to say the least and we understand it is vital that there is a clear dialogue between employers and their teams me during the return to work planning process so concerns, can be raised and individuals needs and worries taken into account.
Putting the theory into practice the WYLDE team have been busy working with several clients to navigate the difficulties of maintaining social distance working with spaces that were designed for a pre Covid world. This has involved establishing a return to work plan that involves various steps designed to gradually enable people to return to the workplace and has health and safety considerations at its heart. The successful implementation of a Covid layout partly relies on staff being mindful, careful and considerate when moving around their workspace to avoid potential cross contamination by overlapping with someone else’s safe space.
We acknowledge that each building is unique and therefore, it is important that your workplace is risk assessed to manage the critical control points of your business. Difficult areas such as the stairways, WCs or hallways need to be managed in an effective way, reviewing each area and developing a strategy to allow staff to move around and use facilities as safely as possible. We have been co-creating layouts working closely with facilities teams to ensure that each element of the space management works together.
The Wylde team can provide and/or support your team to develop, design, cost effective workspace plans, we believe this will be an essential element to help reassure your team and help them understand how their Covid-19 workspace can operate within the new guidelines, by using signage and way finding to achieve the best result and it provides a very visual “map” of the layout and constraints.
This can buy time to decide long term how working from home and changes in business practices may impact and ultimately change the landscape of your future office, we may not have a full understanding of this for 6-12 months.
We appreciate this is an unprecedented situation and one where the onus is on business owners to protect their staff whilst reigniting motivation into the working day. Our animation helps to visualise the reality of social distancing in the workplace and the implications this will have on numbers allowed to return to work safely.
If you need help with your plans, your signage and wayfinding or perhaps you want to introduce screens or review your risk assessment, get in touch, we are working collectively during the pandemic to make this the new normal at work.
