I joined the working-from-home brigade roughly five weeks ago, and I can confidently say now that nothing beats a good workplace.
It’s not that I don’t like working in my pajamas—it’s that offices provide vital links to other people. Like many other companies, we’re replicating that online as best we can, but there’s no easy way to replace simply bumping into someone in the hallway.
The best offices—places like the ones we spotlight at bit.ly/2020OfficeTrends—set people up for success by creating opportunities to focus, collaborate and find inspiration, whatever you may need at that time. That’s simply not easy to recreate in an apartment.
Fortunately, at some point our buildings will reopen and we’ll be able to occupy our offices (and other facilities) once more. However, things may look a little different post-COVID. There may be more emphasis on disinfecting hot spots or encouraging personal hygiene with hand sanitizer stations.
We can also expect no small number of recovery tasks related to having buildings sitting empty or underused—for example, check out our podcasts at buildings.com or your favorite podcast platform for an exploration of what happens to piping when your building isn’t full of people using water all day.
One thing we know won’t change is the need to save money while delivering better results for buildings, especially given the economic effects of this pandemic. Turn to page 24 for a preview of our annual Money-Saving Products or see all 45 winning products at bit.ly/2020MoneySavingProducts.
Is anything changing with your facility? Have you used the underoccupation period to start or finish any projects, like Sarah Kloepple explores on page 34? Let me know at [email protected] or reach out to us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
