Preparing for the Future of Work: Strategies, Resources, Planning

Offices that are looking to reopen their doors and consider the future of work environments will want to keep their employees safe and healthy. Accomplishing this goal can be achieved with careful planning, consideration, and the right technology. We have examined new areas of health and safety for organizations who are looking to reopen or simply prepare for the future of work that includes managing occupancy, social distancing, thermal screening and more.

How Does an Occupancy Tracking Solution Help with Future of Work: While offices across the country continue to open, they are faced with a challenge: configuring seating and work space in a way allowing for social distancing by employees. Offices must properly calculate and limit the amount of employees coming into the office on a given day to ensure occupancy does not exceed the ability to safely social distance.

Occupancy Tracking Solutions help ensure tracking accuracy so that your offices are not filled with an unsafe number of employees in the location at one time. Using IP-based video surveillance, the birds-eye-view camera perspective and video analytics software will detect people entering and exiting the office. This data can be communicated to organization’s appropriate personnel, such as security and safety personnel, alerting them when occupancy is nearing capacity so that parameters can proactively be enforced.

How Does Social Distancing and Contact Tracing Help with Future of Work: There may be a chance of someone bringing COVID-19 into your office, even as restrictions ease and people begin returning to the workplace adhering to new safety protocols. Contact tracing utilizing technology can aid in the identification of individuals who may have potentially come in contact with COVID-19 in the workplace and mitigate its spread. Technology from body sensors that measure each interaction for distance and time, as well as dashboards with contact tracing reports and identifiers for potential office hot zones, may assist with keeping your employees safe.

How Does Temperature Screening Help with Reopening: CDC recommendations for re-opening includes temperature screenings prior to having someone enter an office space. Many businesses that are reopening, such as retail and restaurants, are already screening individuals with temperature checks upon entering the establishment. However, an organization will have far more people coming in at one time and having someone check each person’s temperature can slow down the entry process to a crawl. Organizations will need to consider different strategies to properly social distance while not causing a bottleneck at office entrances.

There are a number of ways you can utilize thermal screening, depending on the size of your office and the strategies you wish to employ. Non-contact handheld thermometers can temperature screen an individual, while mounted thermographic cameras can screen multiple individuals at a faster rate, however, these mounted devices have a bigger variance in measurement than the handheld counterpart. A strategy employing multiple devices is viable as well, screening employees quickly but giving an extra check for those who may have a higher temperature.

How Does Sanitization Help with Reopening: It goes without saying that the number one priority when returning to work is safety, and that includes a clean work environment that reduces the chance of spreading an illness. Digital signage can reinforce and remind employees of proper hygiene and sanitization steps and techniques while UVC lighting can be utilized to help keep devices, objects and high-touch surfaces clean and sanitized to reduce potential spread of germs. Additional efforts to keep employees safe, including occupancy controls and social distancing practices, are the key to safety when proactively designing sanitization strategies against infection.

With some employees beginning to head back to the office, organizations should take the time to assess and evaluate their current technology infrastructure and IT management strategy and look for possible enhancements or cost containment opportunities. You want to ensure that in addition to providing a safe working environment, your employees can continue to work productively and successfully.