collaborative post // For those self employed people who started to upgrade their business to an office environment pre-COVID, only to find that everybody was sent home, can struggle to get the balance right in a post-COVID world. There are a lot of people who want to work from home forever more, and we cannot ignore these people, but this is why we need to know what it takes to make an efficient office environment in the post-COVID landscape. Here are a few things to bear in mind.
Scale Down Your Services (but Keep the Essential Ones)
A lot of people think that an office in the post-COVID environment means being able to completely slash your resources is not the right way of thinking. The fact is that your office still needs to run like the office it was before the pandemic, but in a more streamlined version.
You will still need things like commercial cleaning services, but you have to recognise that you may be able to not keep the office running 5 days a week like you used to. You could benefit from going to a small office, or opting for hot desking by renting out an office space, but this is why you cannot confuse scaling down with removing the services.
Optimising Your Layout
With fewer people coming back to the office, you don’t need to stick to the old habits. Now is the perfect opportunity to rethink your office space and reinvigorate it. Ensuring that you create a layout that doesn’t just make for efficiency, but also makes it a space that employees are happy to come to will make a big difference in the overall productivity of your operation.
When people choose to come into the office, it is for the fact that they want to get away from the home environment, perhaps because they live alone or because they can get more done. Changing your layout to make sure that you have more breakout spaces, or allow people to collaborate or work by themselves can have a positive impact on the entire organisation.
Rethink Your Time Management Strategies
This is something that bigger businesses can use to their advantage. If you are streamlining your office space by downsizing, you could make a far more streamlined organisation by incorporating more efficient time management strategies.
For example, you could split the daily workforce up and help them to work in shifts, and of course, keeping hybrid working options at the forefront of your organisation is going to appeal to future employees.
While social distancing can feel like a lifetime ago, there are still people who are conscious that, if they get COVID, they don’t want to impact others’ work-life, but also their home life. This is where we can ensure that, if there is an outbreak in the office, the fallout is greatly minimised.
In order to create a more effective office in a post-COVID environment that encompasses many different disciplines, while it can certainly save your business money, it is critical to remember that the organisation can still benefit from diverse ways of working.
This is great thank Jenny. I hope you are well.