Sneeze Guards, Air Filters Pitched as Quick Fixes for Reopening Offices

Before urging employees to return to the office, employers should consider short-term fixes such as face masks, staggered work shifts, clear plastic sneeze guards and upgraded air filters, according to government officials and real estate companies.

Today, office employees across the country are working at kitchen tables with pets as coworkers. But as more U.S. states lift stay-home mandates and reopen for business, even as the coronavirus is still a threat and no vaccine exists, now's the time when employers and building owners should prepare, officials say.

Architecture and design firms are working on long-term plans for office design in a post-COVID-19 world, but government officials and property management firms are issuing short-term solutions to keep workers safe, such as limiting the number of workers in the office at one time and encouraging social distancing.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends employers have flexible sick leave policies that might include giving workers advances on future sick leave or allowing employees to donate sick time to each other.

Guidelines from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration include "cost-effective solutions" for employers, such as installing clear plastic sneeze guards, high-efficiency air filters and boosting ventilation.

Bryan Berthold, a licensed architect and managing director of workplace strategy and change management at global real estate brokerage Cushman & Wakefield, encourages one-direction, clockwise foot traffic to try to prevent collisions or too-close contact in corridors and hallways. Clockwise traffic can be encouraged with circular designs in carpet patterns or with signs and stickers.

At first the office will have a lot of markers, signs and new partitions, literal reminders for people to keep a distance, Berthold said.

“I think over time you’ll see people adopt those new behaviors, and you won’t have to be so literal,” he said.

Cushman & Wakefield suggests reconfiguring office spaces in its "Six Foot Office" report. The firm has an office portfolio in China, where it consulted clients at 10,000 companies and more than 1 million employees returning to work after an extended coronavirus lockdown, according to the company.

“The workplace was designed to create these collisions, these conversations, and now we’re saying, ‘Let’s play it safe and maintain distance,'" Berthold said. “You can create all this wonderful design … but a lot of this is behavioral.”

Cushman & Wakefield's guidelines also point out that companies must recognize the initial fear and anxiety of returning to work after a global pandemic, and it's important companies show employees how they're trying to make the workplace safe.

"You have to showcase how you're thinking about things differently," Berthold said.

In open office settings and coworking locations, there will probably have to be some desks and bench seating removed to promote more distance, he said. For coworking spaces, there may be more shared touch points that need to be removed, such as coffee pots and keyboards, and more frequent cleaning will be needed for shared surfaces, equipment and break rooms.

WeWork recently unveiled its plans for a post-pandemic office that includes stickers, new clean-up rules and touchless hand sanitizer stations that could be a model for other coworking firms.

Extended lockdown periods have forced many office workers to get comfortable with using digital tools and video conferencing to collaborate. The reliance on digital collaboration will likely have to continue as companies try to limit the number of people in the office and promote distancing, Berthold said.

Cushman & Wakefield guidelines also suggest dozens of other operational changes, such as limiting the number of visitors in a workplace, taking people’s temperatures at the door, asking employees to bring their own food and designating one area for deliveries.

“We know the ideal state isn’t easy. We don’t expect you to gut the floors. We don’t expect you to spend lots of time or dollars,” Berthold said.

Suggestions for quickly creating a healthy and safe workplace, according to Cushman & Wakefield:

• Calculate new capacity by square feet for each area of an office with social distancing in mind. For example, for 6-feet distancing, divide a room with 200 square feet by 36 so that there would be a maximum of 5 people or a max of 25 people for 1,000 square feet.
• Install signposts and markers in corridors, break rooms and entryways for distancing and traffic flow.
• Provide real-time meters or dashboards that display how many people are present in an area.
• Space out desks and use assigned seating to ensure adequate spacing.
• Add partitions in between desks and adjustable panels for sit-stand desks.
• Repurpose large conference rooms and reduce seating capacity.
• Eliminate phones, whiteboard pens, erasers and remote controls in any shared conference or meeting room.
• Convert small conference rooms to single-occupancy use.
• Remove nonessential doors and door handles, or leave doors in the open position.
• Switch to motion-detected light switches.
• Add glass or plastic screens in between guests and receptionists.
• Remove reception furniture and decommission touchscreen registration.
• Place sanitized floor mats in entryways.