Designing a Social-Distancing Friendly Office

Ask any business owner and they’ll tell you that COVID-19 has changed the way they think about office spaces. Historically, keeping employees comfortable and giving them space for productive work was the most important concern when it came to office design. Now, many business owners find themselves balancing these priorities with the pressing need to keep the members of their workforce safe. If you find yourself needing to create an office design which accommodates social distancing, here are a few basic principles to keep in mind:

Designing With Partitions

Whether you’d describe your office as an open-concept space or a city of cubes, you shouldn’t underestimate the importance of partitions. Placing barriers or plexiglass screens around individual workstations—or using them to increase the height of cubicle walls—can help limit the spread of germs through the air. Larger partitions, on the other hand, can help your staff implement social distancing practices in the office. Barriers serve as an effective form of traffic control; they can prevent employees from taking routes through the office that would place them in unnecessarily close proximity to each other, and by controlling available traffic routes, they can reduce congestion as well.

Implementing the Six-Foot Rule

In addition to making use of partitions, you may find it helpful to keep the six-foot rule in mind when it comes to the design of your office. Simply put, your employees should be able to maintain a six-foot distance between themselves and others at all times. Rearranging workstations—or seating charts—should prove to be helpful in this respect. Additionally, integrating visual cues into your office design will help employees keep appropriate social distancing practices in mind. This can involve anything from different colored carpeting around workstations or in conference rooms to subtle tape markers spaced out on the floor

Of course, if you’d like help in implementing a social distancing-friendly design in your Florida office, there’s no better place to turn than Ajax Business Interiors. Contact us today!