Plexiglass, masks, warning signs; Is this the office of the future?
Do you remember this:

“if they move my desk one more time I’m quitting”

This is from the movie Office Space and this is what offices used to look like: confined spaces.

Offices evolved to this open plan social hubs like the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco

“We love to come together, we love to collaborate, we love to have face-to-face meetings” says Salesforce real estate vice president.
She has spent the last eight weeks turning those principles on their head.

They were inspired by “The Six Feet Office” model.
It’s not exactly a return to cubicles but there are similarities.
There may be plexiglas dividers between work stations on the open floor plans and then even meeting rooms will have a capacity problem because they are not able to hold as many people as before.

It’s really about giving people visual cues to help them remember about physical distancing.

Plans are still being finalized. Masks will be mandatory.
Temperature checked on a regular basis at different places in the office space.

Corporate world high-rise offices present a particular challenge.

RXR Realty president Michael Maturo, the fourth largest office landlord in Manhattan is reevaluating every detail of its buildings.
All the HVAC systems have been changed so that they have the highest grade filters that pick up the smallest particles.

Where it’s possible, we’re changing the locations of the printers that usually were in corners and were getting congested.
We’re moving them to more open spaces.

Technology also critical to his plan, they’ll be able to actually look to see what the whole index of the building is.
“When they go into the office space there’s gonna be a tool on your app that actually will monitor your extreme social distancing and at the end of the day you’ll be able to see if you were social distancing 70%, 75% of the time.”

Amidst all that change there’s one part of this new office reality that’s already here and that’s working from home. Your home office.

Many companies are planning to stack a shift, others are telling staff who can work from home that they can keep going working from home.
Twitter has even told its employees that if they want to they can work from home forever

It’s clear in this world where the virus is still a threat that the ultimate trick to keeping offices safe is having fewer people in them.