The impact that COVID-19 has left on the office and workplace environment has unearthed challenges that many employers have never faced before. As management teams continue to meet the primary responsibility of navigating their companies through this disruption, the question that still continues to come up is, “How should employers plan in the short-term and feel prepared for the long-term?”
In July, CORT surveyed almost 1,000 respondents across 12 different industries asked for their thoughts on ten other areas related to how the pandemic has affected the workplace. We wanted to know about their perspectives on working from home, employee concerns with returning to work, business changes, and upcoming office trends ranked by safety.
Recently, Peggy Moore, Senior Vice President of Corporate Sales at CORT, expanded on this topic even more on the CORENet Global’s podcast “What’s Next?” with Tim Venable. During their conversation, Peggy goes in-depth on what employers are asking of CORT as they begin to retrofit their office space for employees to return to work in the short-term. She also offers practical advice on how to plan for the long-term.
“From my perspective, what I’m seeing and what I’m envisioning, there really needs to be ‘on-call,’ and ‘on-demand’ solutions that provide the ability for everyone to ‘batten down the hatches’ at the workplace much like we do for a hurricane” explained Moore during the interview. “Barriers and dividers up during a virus incident and systems revert back down when we get the all-clear. Businesses can not afford to maintain two work environments. And I’m not sure if everyone working from home is sustainable for businesses for a variety of reasons…employees need to feel that coming back to the office will not be a risk to their health.”
