Guide To Reopen Offices Checklist

Time to Read: 3 minutes

Guide to Reopen Offices Checklist Summary:

• Eight critical points to include in the plan to reopen offices.
• Leadership, HR, Legal, Operations, Communications to determine an actionable plan.
• How to communicate the plan to your internal employees, customers, and vendors.

Your business has taken every precaution to date in regards to keeping your employees safe and responsibly doing your part in practicing socially distancing to help flatten the curve. These measures likely came with making large business concessions, furlough’s, lay-offs, and closing of some office locations. Having multiple offices ourselves as well as the responsibility of consulting client organizations and managing consultants nationwide, here is a guide to reopening offices amid COVID.

Sensitive to your co-workers and their concerns around returning to the office is top priority. Since March of 2020 it has been ingrained in our minds to shelter in place which has built in a new layer of precautions on how we navigate in public settings. When it is time for businesses to open back up, how exactly is that accomplished in the office space to make employees feel at ease?

Guide to Reopen Offices Checklist:

1. Date of which physical offices will reopen
2. Travel restrictions
3. Sanitation procedures
   • Frequency and depth of sanitation
   • Purell stations
   • Are masks required?
4. 50% Percentage of occupancy at each office
   • Example: Mapping of the office space and planning for work spaces to be 6 feet apart
   • Example: How will conference rooms be utilized?
   • Example: Dividing the staffing into A/B days so one week in office, one week remote
5. Protocol if an employee feels ill
6. Temperature checks or recording of temperature each morning for those commuting into the office. If this measure if declined due to the inability of accuracy then explain this step was considered but will not be implemented.
7. Corporate to collect any special requests to cater to those with underlying respiratory or high risk disease
   • Employees to submit requests accompanied by reason, doctors note if applicable, and proposed plan of action to be received by a specified date
   • Special requests to be reviewed by the head of department, legal, human resources, and leadership
   • Plan of action for each special request on a case by case basis
8. The business to assess week by week and month by month how the plan is performing. Adjusting and over-communicating as necessary

Communicating the Plan to Reopen Offices:

• Define the office reopening plan among the leadership team. Ensure representatives from HR, Legal, Operations, and Communications are present if applicable.
• Host an internal meeting with leadership and department heads to communicate the defined plan and welcome questions.
• Host an all staff conference to communicate the plan and direct employee questions to the respective department heads.
• Email all staff a recap of the verbal communication.
• Set expectations that this plan will continued to be monitored and reassessed as current events evolve.
• Continue all staff conferences and email communications on a frequent basis. Redundancy is a positive.
• Communicate your plan to resume business to your vendors and customers via phone and email.

From our Profiles family to yours. We wish nothing but a safe and successful reopening of the office.

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