How will COVID-19 change the location, design and use of office space?

It seems like the articles about COVID-19, and its impact on every single scope of human life are nowadays ubiquitous. As a matter of fact, there is nothing to be surprised with, as the global community simply keeps on talking about what bothers it the most, and when it comes to coronavirus, one cannot deny that it has surely had a noxious impact on each and every domain of human activities. While some two-three months ago, people used to talk about when things were going to go back to normal.  Today, everything folks can ponder over are the changes that we will have to adapt ourselves to. The domain of commercial real estate has not become an exception out of the general rule. Today, we will talk about office spaces and how the COVID-19 pandemic is going to change the way they look and the way people use them.

Empty Spaces… What Are We Working For?

Now, one thing that is known for sure is that the pandemic will undoubtedly change the seating layout of offices. We won’t probably be any longer able to see all those densely seated offices with employees working shoulder-to-shoulder with each other. Every single tenant searching to, for example, rent an office in München will surely pay attention to the safety measures taken and maintained in the building. Companies will most likely start using for more spacious offices where they would be able to keep the distance between the employees.

Hygiene and Sanitation Everywhere

Every office space will now have to feature the sanitation and hygiene stations, as it is quite likely that it would be the employers’ responsibility to provide the personnel with the antiseptic substances, tissues, etc. It seems that the majority of the rent an office in Vienna requests will come along with the “hygiene points” additive at the tail of the sentence. Every office is a space where people’s bacteria are everywhere, as there is a lot of commonly used equipment, such as printers, copy machines, etc. Hence, ensuring sufficient hygienic conditions will be crucial in the offices shaped by the pandemic.

Shifts Fluctuations

Those waiting for the offices being packed on the business days shall probably pinch themselves and check whether they’re not sleeping. Office managers will now rotate shifts making sure that the employees work up to three shifts from the office. The work-from-home mode is also not going anywhere, as it would be recommended to the company owners that they filled the offices up a half, making sure they avoid too large congregations of people in closed spaces.

Directions & Screenings

The last and surely not the least component that the post-COVID-19 offices are going to feature would be the on-floor direction marks that will coordinate people’s movement within the office, thus minimizing their contact and maximizing the distance between them. Also, the temperature screens checking the employees’ body temperature are going to be installed not only at the entrance. Having researched the nature of coronavirus, WHO claims that an infected individual is not necessarily hit with a fever wave the very moment the virus penetrates their bodies. The body’s temperature can increase over the course of the day, and isolating that employee as soon as possible would be vital to keeping the other protected.

A Round-Up

Thinking that COVID-19 will go unnoticed in the history of humanity is as useless as saying that the pandemic will destroy the commercial property market. While some folks keep on drawing parallels between coronavirus and the Spanish flu, saying that nobody can feel the ‘everlasting’ effect of the 1918’s plague, they have to understand that it was more than a hundred years ago. COVID-19 is here and now, and the problem needs to be faced. There is no way that people can keep on working from their homes, as it is detrimental in every single scope: economically, psychologically, and socially. Office spaces will come different, but this new reality would be based on nothing else but the employers’ desire to protect their subordinates, and there is nothing wrong about it.