Working in an office during the coronavirus pandemic will be very different from what it used to be.
A May 16, 2020 Boston Globe article outlined some of the changes that office workers can expect, from temperature checks to elevator lines to Zoom meetings with the person in the office next to you. Other changes could include guards sitting behind plexiglass, mandatory face masks, lots of hand sanitizer dispensers, and frequent cleanings by janitors.
“It will look and feel different, right off the bat,” said Joseph Allen, assistant professor of exposure assessment science at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and an expert on healthy buildings. “And it will be inconvenient to go to work.”
Allen said that although social distancing measures in offices will gradually ease, some changes will remain for a long time. He pointed out that some protective measures put in place after 9/11, such as stanchions and extra security guards, don’t seem strange any more.
“The goal with security is you walk in and you don’t think about,” he said. “The goal should be the same with healthier buildings. We’re not there yet. But we will be.”
Read the Boston Globe article: Lines for the elevator. Zooming with colleagues in the next pod over. Office life is going to be strange.
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A five-layered defense for workplace reopening (Harvard Gazette)