JLL’s guide to preparing for office re-entry

Here’s an edited extract.

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Before you re-open your buildings and welcome your employees back to work, you need to be confident that you’ve thought through any space, occupancy or design adjustments. A critical step in developing your re-entry strategy is mapping potential risk points based on typical movements within the workplace and establishing de-densification thresholds. Each decision should effectively balance the health, safety, and financial implications.

A re-entry package should include:

Re-entry strategy & implementation plan | Develop a holistic re-entry strategy, by designing an integrated approach that’s specifically tailored to the needs of your workspace and your workforce (and coordinated with landlords and other tenants, where applicable). And ensure that your implementation plan accounts for multiple re-entry scenarios, to give you maximum flexibility with when and where you re-enter.

Social distancing occupancy strategy & enablement | Adjust your space’s capacity, seating plan and layout based on social distancing guidelines, identify those critical employees who should return to work in each wave of re-entry (and create rotational schedules where needed), and execute any work setting changes or furniture reconfigurations. Update your space usage guidelines (especially for shared spaces like meeting rooms, collaboration spaces, and restrooms) and associated cleaning routines. Replace high-touch items (like doors and trash cans) with no-touch options. And finally, make sure your employees are clear on what’s expected of them, too – by clearly communicating new protocols for respiratory etiquette, sharing office resources like desks and phones, and what to do if an employee becomes sick at work.

Workplace foot traffic management & wayfinding | Help your employees seamlessly navigate your space according to social distancing guidelines (and mitigate the risk of non-compliance in the process). Use signage to clearly communicate new one-way circulation patterns and provide queueing guidance where bottlenecks typically occur (in lift lobbies and restrooms, for example).

Flexible space risk advisory | Add flexibility to your re-entry strategy. Quickly assess opportunities and risks within your flexible space portfolio, de-densify your office space by taking on short-term flexible space, renegotiate or exit existing flexible space agreements, and achieve the right portfolio liquidity balance. As you design and implement these changes, you’ll want to ensure the protocols and guidelines you put in place are being enforced.

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Attendance monitoring & self-reporting | Leverage readily available data sources like security badge access data and daily show-up rates to ensure that you’re not exceeding your post-pandemic capacity (and minimising the risk of breaching social distancing guidelines). Engage your employees to self-report social distancing breaches to reinforce your organization’s commitment to their safety.

Workspace, meeting & collaboration space management | Coordinate the employee re-entry process using our web-based COVID-19 reservation management system. Designate specific seats as “unavailable” due to social distancing protocols, rotate available seats based on shifts, and block out conference rooms after meetings end to refresh the space before the next session.