HOW CAN WORKPLACE DESIGN LEARN FROM HEALTHCARE IN A POST-PANDEMIC?

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How can office space adapt to keep employees' preferred workspace while keeping employees safe when they work from the office?

Interior designers face new challenges when people return to work from the office. How do you balance the need for attractive space for your employees when it comes to the office while still feeling safe and comfortable? After spending months working from home, many people say they want to return to work one way or another. Many consistent reasons are given, whether it's through surveys or other studies you read about. Employees are more productive and enjoy work more when they can connect with people in the office. Studies show that people prefer to meet, socialize and connect with other people or their co-workers in person.

Various spaces in the office support various modes of work, especially collaboration that will not just disappear. The demand for employees will be more because even though you can complete certain types of work via video, you are still doing generative work creating new ideas and solving complex problems. Sometimes you just unconsciously like to work together in a room designed to foster creativity and innovation.

Working from home, many of you have undoubtedly noticed a change in work patterns. Your ability to adapt to working remotely depends on the relationships that are built over time through in-person interactions and casual conversations. You will also find out why the office is important. An informal or additional space where employees socialize, collaborate, focus, and relax make your employees' workday better and help them build strong trust and cooperation. So how does your office design adapt to keeping the parts of the space your employees love while also keeping it safe?

Office Design

One design magazine, Work Design Magazine, shares research that produces a set of performance principles to guide the design of co-working spaces where people want to work and be productive. These principles remain the basis for designing the social and collaborative spaces of post-COVID 19 employees. However, new design challenges must be resolved by addressing the geometry and division of workspace designs.

Application of Social Distancing to Office Design

Now people have to consider applying physical distancing. The proximity of people to technology and tools is most used for open and closed workspaces and can accommodate employees who work remotely. The furniture used in your office must consider the density and arrangement of its location in a new way so that it can show the distance between employees from one another.

Not only distance between employees, every form of privacy is visual, informational, and space helps people feel comfortable, free to share ideas and make your employees' work visible. But the privacy of the room has additional importance for security. The existence of additional space can create boundaries to protect people from colleagues in workspaces that are located close to each other or the flow of traffic in the office.

Office Space Furniture Design

Apart from the workspace design, you can also pay attention to the furniture used by your employees. For example, if you consider the various types of activity postures that your employees carry out when arranging the workspace, such as sitting posture, bench height, standing, or relaxing, it can provide more flexibility in creating greater distances and allowing for changes in the layout of the furniture as needed.

The interior of a room can attract and connect people with the type of furniture and culture in the office. While the virus can spread through surfaces, you have a new focus on cleanliness for furniture that complements your office interior design and a residence-inspired finish.

Office Design Challenges

There are three main design challenges to discover when you become aware of new problems in creating a safer work environment during COVID-19. Understanding the distance and density in the room, as well as their relationship to circulation patterns in the existing spatial context is the key to implementing existing safety policies in collaboration spaces

1. Physical Distances

To maintain a distance of 6 feet around each employee, furniture must provide adequate spacing to allow each employee to maintain the distance recommended in the health protocol.

2. Circulation Pattern

People must be able to move indoors while maintaining a distance. Safe circulation is possible through a collaborative space that can be made wide and adequate for passage. That way, traffic will be directed and increase protection in the office.

3. Spatial Design

Every room design has a different context which is important to adapt your current office design. Do you want to adopt an open or closed space? Repairing walls and furniture? Have problems with limited air circulation? Narrow lane? What needs to be changed to provide adequate space or protection within the office? You have to pay attention to the right design in times of a pandemic like this.

Pandemic Office Design Strategies

Density, geometry and division in every room in your office are the main strategies you can use to solve office design challenges during a pandemic. You can reduce the number of people in a roar to comply with the 6-foot social distancing policy. To do this, you can rearrange the existing furniture in your employees' workspace. Not only is the density in the office that you need to pay attention to, other things such as geometric elements are also important. Geometry elements relate to the arrangement of all furniture in a room. You can change the arrangement of furniture to maximize distance and minimize distance when face to face.

There is one easy thing that you can add when adapting your office design is adding panels so that you can create boundaries and boundaries between employees, people, and employee traffic paths within the office. If you use it in combination with office design principles during a pandemic, this strategy will create an office space where people can collaborate and socialize more safely. Collaboration room which offers its ability to adapt in the future because your office design needs to change. These changes are made easy because furniture is often positioned on its own and can be moved further away or placed at a protected angle.

Is your office design in line with the implementation of health protocols during this pandemic? Your employees must feel safe and comfortable when working from the office. If you are still confused about choosing an office design, choosing the right furniture or working space arrangement, you can contact our customer service to work with us to design your office space.

This article was adapted from https://www.workdesign.com/

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