The office needs to be a safe space if we have to return back to normal 

 

As countries around the world scale up their inoculation drives, there has been increasing efforts by employers and governments to push for a return to normalcy. The UK was one of the major global economies to lift all covid-19 restrictions on the 19th of July, including advise on working from home. The Chancellor Rishi Sunak has been the leading vocal advocate of the return to the office, calling all young workers to return and cautioning that working from home is not nearly that “valuable” for their careers.   

 

Amidst this push to the return to normalcy, employers have a delicate balance to achieve. As Liviu Tudor, the President of the European Property Federation and the developer of the IMMUNE Building Standard™ says, the office would inevitably have to accommodate three different kinds of people – the ones who are keen to return no matter what, the ones who need a degree of flexibility of working from home, and the ones who may be hesitant or vulnerable.  

 

As the pandemic shutdown countries and as offices closed around the world, Liviu developed the IMMUNE Building Standard™, a set of 130+ recommended measures, technical solutions, and facility management practices to certify the level of resilience of a building to present and future health challenges. If the return to the office has to be a success, Liviu strongly believes it is the responsibility of the landlords and employers to create a safe environment for workers to feel confident to return. The standard he developed has across offices in the UK and Europe, including very recently in Bucharest, Romania, at Building H3 in the West Gate Business District, fully occupied by Ericsson – which received the world’s IMMUNE Resilient rating – the highest label.     

 

Another key factor that companies need to consider is the impact on the mental health of employees, having gone though over 16 months of the pandemic and working from home. According to a new McKinsey survey, one-third of respondents said that their return to work has already had a negative impact on their mental health while others welcome the return to work on-site. 19% of employees who have not yet shifted back from remote to on-site work expect that their return will have a positive impact on their mental health whereas 49% of respondents anticipate going back will have somewhat or significant negative impacts. According to the Centre for Economic Policy Research, perceptions around working from home improved for 76 percent of 5,000 working adults in the UK surveyed in January and February 2021.  

 

Ensuring employee mental health and enabling a degree of flexibility would be critical in supporting the return to the office. Organisations would have to invest in employee support systems to enable a smoother transition back to the office environment instead of a sudden start approach. The pandemic has been a great disrupter and the solution is certainly not a jump start.