The more I read and hear about what offices will be like as they reopen, the more dystopian it sounds: empty desks, no meetings, everyone keeping their distance from one another. I miss the thrum and hum of the workplace, but the need to maintain social distancing means reopening won’t bring that back.
And for all that offices will be quieter and emptier, they may not be much safer. Erin Bromage, a biology professor at UMass Dartmouth, compiled a useful list of several known COVID-19 super-spreading events that highlights the danger of being cooped up inside with a sick person. If a 90-minute restaurant meal, 120-minute choir practice or 180-minute birthday party is enough for one person to infect a roomful, how much more risk is in a 540-minute workday, even with precautions?
Rather than bring employees back anytime soon, organizations should settle into remote work for the long haul — as some are beginning to do. Google and Facebook have gone this route, telling employees to work from home for the rest of 2020. Microsoft is green-lighting telework through October. Twitter has said employees can continue to log in from home indefinitely.
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