Return to Work Office Maintenance Tips

return to work office maintenance

Return to Work Office Maintenance Tips

With the hope of Coronavirus restrictions beginning to ease this year, many businesses are having to re-evaluate their workspaces. Although it may soon be viable for many employees to return to the office, the issues of social distancing and hygiene will still be at the top of everyone’s priority list. If re-opening the workplace to staff is on the cards for your company, here are a few office maintenance issues to consider.

  • Check the heating, water, lighting and ventilation systems: building managers should have been keeping an eye on these anyway, but it’s always good to give your systems a thorough once over to make sure everything is working properly. Good ventilation and hot water for washing hands are especially important in the current climate, so you need to ensure that there won’t be any issues with those facilities.
  • Redo your fire risk assessments: people may be occupying and moving through your building in a different way on their return, so your fire safety risk assessments and policies need to reflect those changes. You’ll also need to check your alarm systems, emergency lighting, fire extinguishers and fire doors thoroughly to ensure the premises is still up to regulation.
  • Reorganise the space: depending on your current set up, you may need to change the layout of your workspace to facilitate effective social distancing. If you’re working on a shift basis where fewer people are in the building at one time, moving the furniture to create more space may be sufficient. If that’s not an option, partitioning off individual workstations may be a more practical option for your business. Bear in mind that changing the layout of your commercial space may necessitate things like moving electrical outlets and cabling, or adding more storage, so plan ahead to give yourself enough time for any work to be done.
  • Assess your doors: we all know door handles are a magnet for germs, so you may want to look into changing to more hygienic handles or changing the doors themselves to automatic or push opening doors, where appropriate.
  • Redecorating: whether a freshen up of the décor is on the cards or not, you might want to think about how to keep your workplace cleaner. Wipeable paint and hygienic tiling may be better than other surfaces for keeping things virus-free, especially in high traffic areas or those near washing facilities.
  • Hygiene facilities: do you have enough sinks for people to wash their hands or need to install more soap or hand gel dispensers? You’ll need to work out whether you have the right facilities for the new working environment to give you time to have extra hygiene facilities installed by your office maintenance team.
  • New signage: to help with social distancing, you may need to put up extra signage to remind staff of their responsibilities or to guide them through your building’s spaces in a different way than normal.

Office maintenance contractors

The pandemic has certainly given businesses some interesting challenges to navigate over the past year. Returning to the office is one of the biggest shifts back to normality that we’ll encounter in the coming months. Making sure you’re well-prepared will help you and your employees make a smoother transition.

If you’d like to know more about how the Groom Property Office Maintenance team can help you get your office ready for staff returning to work, get in touch. Our multi-skilled trades are on hand 24/7 for businesses from West and South Wales to Bristol, Swindon, Reading, London and the South East.