Checklist: how to prepare the office for the exit from self-isolation

1. List employees who are ready to go to the office

It is risky to withdraw everyone from a remote location at once. In the office, you can provide employees with relative safety - for example, seating them away from each other and placing sanitizers everywhere. But regular commuting to work on public transport can be dangerous.

Talk to subordinates and find out who can continue to complete tasks from home, and who urgently needs to go to the office. Ideally, those who can walk or drive to work should be the first to return. For employees who have to get to the office by public transport, and even with transfers, it is safer to continue their activities from home. If you have people over 65 in your team, as well as people suffering from chronic diseases or living with elderly parents, they should also be left at a distance for now.

2. Check if the office equipment is working

During the period of self-isolation, there was no one to fix a junk printer or find out why the laptop was making a suspicious noise. Before opening an office to employees, ask if anyone has any complaints about the equipment they use.

After a long period of inactivity, devices designed for regular use can junk, so you should make sure that everything is working properly before leaving the remote location, and if not, then look after new computers or replenish stock necessary components. There is an unobvious bonus here: if subordinates know that the manager cares about the conditions in which they work, this can increase their motivation and give them confidence in the future.

Buy a new laptop

3. Arrange a permutation

Most likely, the concept of social distance will not disappear from our lives for a long time. You will have to observe it not only on the street or in a store, but also in the office. A cramped office, where desks are close to each other, can become a breeding ground for infection, so you need to organize workplaces so that employees do not collide with each other unnecessarily. By the way, this is another argument in favor of leaving some of the subordinates at a distance: the fewer people, the more free space.

Rospotrebnadzor recommendsRecommendations for organizing the work of enterprises in the context of persisting risks of the spread of COVID-19 observe the following standards:

• If the area of ​​the room is less than 50 m², then no more than 5 people can be in it at the same time.
• Indoors up to 100 m² - 10 people.
• Up to 200 m² - no more than 25 people.
• In rooms with an area of ​​over 200 m², up to 50 people can work simultaneously.

There are also requirements for places where a congestion of employees is possible, for example, kitchens and canteens. Here you need to apply markings that help maintain a distance: there should be at least 1.5 meters between people.

4. Monitor employee health

Agree with subordinates that health is above labor deeds. If they feel bad, they can work from home, take a day off or sick leave, because of this no one will look at them askance. In the end, it is better to redistribute the duties of one sick employee in time than to face a situation when the entire department is already coughing.

In order not to expose people to unnecessary risk, it is better to be vigilant and even at the entrance to the office weed out those with a temperature. Instead of contactless thermometers, it is more convenient to use compact thermal imager. He can determine the temperature not only of one motionless person, but also work with a moving crowd. The accuracy of the device is ± 0.5 ° C, and the device measures in real time.

Buy thermal imager

5. Stock up on detergents and sanitizers

Particularly stringent requirements must be imposed on office cleanliness. Leave a supply of skin antiseptics and disinfectant wipes at the entrance, and have an office manager make sure that each employee gets their hands clean. Remind employees to practice good hygiene and wash their hands regularly throughout the day and after each visit to the bathroom. It sounds absurd, but this is the reality in which we have to live.

Wet cleaning with disinfectants in the office should be done every day. Pay special attention to contact surfaces: door handles, switches and handrails are touched most often, therefore, Rospotrebnadzor advises to process themRecommendations for organizing the work of enterprises in the context of persisting risks of the spread of COVID-19 every 2-4 hours. Do not forget about airing - this procedure should be carried out at least once every two hours.

6. Update current programs and install new ones

For obvious reasons, general meetings and meetings are now online. If your company will go to the office by department, a convenient service for teamwork will help you hold meetings remotely and stay in touch with team members who work from home. For example, Microsoft Teams allows you to not only organize a web conference, but also share files, access them with colleagues in real time. The service is included in the Microsoft 365 Business Standard subscription, and with it are provided premium versions Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, plus 1 TB of OneDrive storage and 50 GB mailbox.

Do not forget about antivirus software: while part of the team is performing tasks from home computers, it is worth strengthening defense so that sensitive data does not fall into the hands of intruders. Modern antivirus solutions are able to protect not only a working PC, but also mobile devices - if an employee loses the smartphone issued to him, the antivirus will block the device and delete all valuable information.