The economy is slowly reopening after the Coronavirus pandemic. However, this means that businesses and institutions need to find a safe and secure way of transitioning remote workers back into the office. Although working from home includes its benefits, it is not an ideal situation for most smaller businesses. In a small business, each employee is critical to the operations of the company.
Some business structures work better within the office employees rather than remote employees. However, transitioning your workers back into the office is not as simple as it sounds. The guide below will help you manage the change.
Only Bring Back Certain Staff
The first step is never to bring in all your employees at one time. It is recommended that you bring staff back in shifts to ensure you comply with the government and health protocols. As a business leader, you need to think about the employees that need to be in the office.
Doing this will help you reduce health risks while giving you time to plan accordingly. You can easily bring back more employees once you figure out how to safely manage the few. It will also help if you construct a sanitation area outside the workplace.
You could always bring back your workers in the reverse order that you sent home. Some businesses waited until the last minute to send the essential worker’s home. The use of rotational shifts will also help maintain physical distance while avoiding full office occupancy.
Protect Your Network
As your employees come back to the office, you must keep your network secure from possible viruses or malware. If your employee's devices were regularly patching and updating while working remotely, this is not a problem for you. If, on the other hand, the computers, laptops, and tablets were not receiving routine patches and updates, we recommend running a full security update before you put these machines back onto the corporate network. Bringing staff back in stages will give your IT department a chance to look things over to ensure anti-virus and other patching and security measures are working without the possibility of compromising the network.
Set Up New Office Rules
For starters, you should increase the distance between workspaces in the office. The second step will be to strengthen hygiene procedures. Always remind your office workers about regular handwashing and keeping social distance.
Ensure you provide hand sanitizers at all critical areas in the office. It will also help if you implement temperature checks while entering the building. The good news is that there are many new technologies to help you with temperature checks, including heat-detection cameras.
The number of workers who attend an office meeting should also be limited based on the room's size. Face to face meetings should be held in your office if possible, and if that is not an option, you can always use other viable alternatives for almost real-life conversations such as Teams and Zoom.
Offer a Flexible Transition
Keep in mind that most workers have become accustomed to working from home. This means that they will probably need time to adjust their lives to suit the in-office schedule. For one, they may need to start waking up earlier to account for commuting to work in the morning.
The change back into the office should be gradual, with the essential workers being first. It would be a good idea to provide some transition time to allow employees to get used to all the office distractions might not have had at home. It will help boost morale and encourage teamwork in the office.
Have you considered offering a hybrid working model? This is a system that blends both on-site and remote working. If you operate under the shift model mentioned earlier, you will already have this in place. It can be the perfect business solution because the employees can balance office hours and work from home. You might also be able to reduce the amount of office space that you currently pay for by switching to shared space offices.
Conclusion
Are you thinking of transitioning remote workers back into the office? Request a FREE consultation today to discuss security needs. We, Total Computer Solutions, will help you transition back into the office safely and securely. Ensure you contact us today to talk to a qualified professional to help your business get back on its feet. There is no doubt that the Coronavirus pandemic has affected many sectors of the economy. However, it is time for all of us to get back into the office and begin building or companies up once again.
