As states and municipalities begin reopening and relaxing stay-at-home orders, companies are contemplating and refining their strategies for returning to the office. As your employees begin coming back to work, what are the key things to consider to ensure that everything is safe and secure?

There are important decisions to be made that require the involvement of different groups, including HR, operations, stakeholders, and shareholders. Any plan to reopen should take into account technology, staffing, and appropriate use of physical office space.

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Technology

Technology has played a major role throughout the pandemic shutdown, and it will continue to do so as companies return to the office. Ideally, you've already implemented a number of changes and employed new tools that allow for remote work while continuing to ensure security. You should continue to invest in and maintain those solutions going forward; in-office work will now bear a striking resemblance to work-from-home.

As employees start to come back in, if you haven't already enhanced your remote security posture, now is the perfect time to do so. Plenty of employees will still be working remotely, and there's always a chance that we'll have to return to a mandated work-from-home scenario. This means having solutions in place for remote access, multifactor authentication, secure perimeters, the use of VPNs and antivirus and malware protection.

These same tools will continue to come into play in the office as organizations continue to focus on solutions that reduce in-person contact across the board. Even as offices are repopulated, the goal will be a technology infrastructure that empowers people to work together, but apart. Automation, which has already been a huge focus across all industries, will play an even larger role as companies look to eliminate manual processes that traditionally have required face-to-face interactions.

Communication tools that have carried businesses through the pandemic will also continue to be used. There's a good chance that we'll see workers utilizing videoconferencing tools to speak to other people while in the same building to reduce contact. Similarly, messaging tools will be much more ubiquitous than they were prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, replacing what previously would have been in-person conversations.

Team planning and task management solutions will likely play a larger role for similar reasons. While many companies already had these tools, most employees failed to take advantage of them because in-person planning conversations just seemed easier or more desirable. Any technology that allows for virtual communication, decision-making or planning will see increased use in the months to come.

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Staffing

A key consideration for returning to work is determining who needs and is willing to return to the office. For most companies, the return will start with roles like administration and management that are pivotal to running the office. After that, other roles will likely be phased in as appropriate and necessary.

The reality is that, even after offices reopen, many of your employees will likely continue to work remotely. Many workers have found that they can function just as expeditiously, if not more efficiently, from home, and those folks should continue to stay there. The focus should be on bringing back employees whose jobs require in-person work and those personnel who are critical to office operations and morale.

In the short term, office staffing may be the inverse of what often happened in the past—while executive staff historically had more flexibility to work remotely, junior staff were required to report in every day. Those junior employees may now have no compelling business need to work in-office, while senior management do. Having executive staff on-site is key to making crucial company decisions, instilling confidence in the safety of returning to work and in boosting morale. Returning to work is a new way that senior leadership needs to lead by example, and social distancing physical space limitations may, in turn, dictate that non-leadership roles continue to stay home.

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Physical Space and Logistics

Technology will again play a major role in reopening when it comes to determining who should be there and how they should be working. Safety is paramount, so in addition to stocking PPE and hand sanitizer, offices will be looking to new technologies to screen employees on their way in and to minimize in-person contact once they're there.

While safety measures are currently a shifting target, recommendations from the CDC include that safety should start with morning temperature checks, either with a designated person stationed to take contactless temperatures or through more advanced remote temperature sensors at stand-alone stations. If you don't already have touchless hand sanitizer dispensers throughout the office, you should install them. Some companies are also testing automatic tools designed to combat viruses inside the office, such as misters and other cleaning devices. While the cost of these technologies may seem prohibitive, the potential savings can outweigh initial investment.

Once employees have been screened, the focus must turn to controlling capacity and proximity. Data from swipe-in systems that previously sat unused can potentially be utilized as a counter system to enforce capacity limitations. Physical office configurations should then be employed to enforce social distancing measures.

Most companies have conference rooms and will need to figure out how to use them, if at all. Capacity must be limited and enforced to ensure proper distance between employees. Similarly, sharing offices will not be an option going forward. Open or shared spaces will need to be reallocated and used by workers in new roles to accommodate staff that need to be physically present.

The logistical decisions on how to staff and use offices as businesses reopen will be unique to every organization's needs and physical limitations. There's no one-size-fits-all rule for returning to work, but the driving force behind all decisions should be the safety of your workers. Following CDC and local guidance while relying on technology to replace in-person interactions as much as feasible will set your company on the right path to creating a safe office environment for the new normal.

Eli Nussbaum is a managing director at Keno Kozie Associates. He joined the firm in 1998 as part of its Y2K audit team. Nussbaum then became a full-time engineer, holding every position within the department before taking on an account management role. During his tenure with Keno Kozie, Nussbaum has focused on physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure design and implementation for both infrastructure and client environments.