Businesses need to rethink the way people will interact at the office in the post-pandemic era to ensure a safe return to work for their employees. In order to comply with the new health and safety norms at work, all office spaces will have to be redesigned and adapted. For more information on how to adapt your workplace, see Lib’s blog post: https://lib.space/en/back-to-work-in-covid-mode-to-do-list/

To deepen the process and think about the offices of tomorrow, why not use contactless intelligent building technology to improve the well-being and health of your employees?

A contactless office

To create and maintain a safe work environment, businesses will need to put the contactless office at the forefront of their return-to-work strategy. This will help employees feel confident when returning to the office, even with many people around.

With certain technologies, such as IP communication, which is already used by many companies for their telephone system, the user experience will be improved.

On top of that, in a contactless office, an employee will be able to use an automation system or a Bluetooth application on their smartphone to perform a number of actions such as:

• Opening the doors of the building.

• Automatically being recognized thanks to an automated access system.

• Controlling the elevators.

• Booking meeting rooms.

• Opening the doors to the meeting space and turning on the screens for a video conference.

• Planning when they will be in the office and when they will be working remotely.

• Turning on the lights in a room and adjusting the light intensity.

• Adjusting the room temperature.

• Opening and closing the blinds.

All these potential infection points (as used several times a day by various people) such as elevator buttons, wall thermostats, light switches, and remote controls for blinds or video screens will be eliminated in order to make office spaces safer.

Another important technology that will also have to be taken into consideration for businesses in order to ensure the well-being of employees when they return to the office are occupancy sensors, also known as presence detectors.

They are able to provide data on the use of a meeting room or common space, as well as on the people who used the same space at the same time. This makes it possible to facilitate the cleaning and disinfection of shared areas, to guide the strategies for occupying spaces for the company and to limit the spread of the virus. It also provides an easy alert in the event of contamination.

Communication apps for the team

Since the beginning of the pandemic and to this day, maintaining contact and successful collaboration between employees is made easier with technological tools such as videoconferencing and instant messaging software platforms, such as Zoom, Google Hangouts Meet or Microsoft Teams. These tools have been widely used by businesses. They facilitate teamwork and exchange between people. The same is true for remote data exchange software platforms such as Dropbox and Google Docs.

Check out Lib’s blog post to find out more about these three videoconferencing software: https://lib.space/en/back-to-work-in-covid-mode-to-do-list/

To discover how to adapt your workspace to Covid-19, contact the Lib. experts.