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Restart Best Practices: Preparing to Reopen Your Workplace

April 30, 2020
As Michigan prepares to transition its workforce back to the workplace in the coming months, businesses must start preparing now by putting a plan in place to anticipate all the challenges ahead. To help guide businesses in building their plans, Cushman and Wakefield have created “Recovery Readiness: A How-to Guide for Reopening Your Workplace,” an interactive step-by-step guide to bringing employees back to the physical workplace. Below are some key takeaways, but make sure to check out the full handbook to learn more.

Six Readiness Essentials, “The Safe Six”

Cushman and Wakefield outline below six essential steps to complete before you open your doors once again. These steps are essential to ensure the health and safety of employees and clients and will help prevent the greater challenges that come along with having an outbreak of COVID-19 cases among staff.

  1. Prepare the Building: cleaning plans, pre-return inspections, HVAC & Mechanicals checks
  2. Prepare the Workforce: mitigating anxiety, policies for deciding who returns, employee communications
  3. Control Access: protocols for safety and health checks, building reception, shipping and receiving, elevators, visitor policies
  4. Create a Social Distancing Plan: decreasing density, schedule management, office traffic patterns
  5. Reduce Touch Points and Increase Cleaning: open doors, clean desk policy, food plan, cleaning common areas
  6. Communicate for Confidence: recognize the fear in returning, communicate transparently, listen and survey regularly

Create a Plan

Even as you are legally allowed to, you might consider not having all employees return to the workplace at once. Cushman and Wakefield explain that businesses should decide in advance which employees are essential in the office first. Your plan should include how to transition employees back, how to practice social distancing in the workplace, policies in place to anticipate issues that arise, and prepared communications.

The most important part of returning your employees to the workplace is ensuring their safety. Cushman and Wakefield suggest creating an emergency task force in case COVID-19 cases become present in your workplace, or additional waves of shutdowns occur in the region or state.

Learn more: Recovery Readiness: A How-to Guide for Reopening Your Workplace