Creativity is one thing that I would be concerned about when everyone remains socially distanced. The chance encounters in the lunchroom or dining facility won't happen with people working from home.
The following comes from INTERCEPT:
"Every week, dozens of major corporations share their current concerns on risks and challenges to their operations and strategies to address them. They also benchmark their planned actions as part of INTERCEP's SOC-NET community which engages leaders in operational risk, and resilience, security, continuity, crisis and emergency management.
"Current radar check highlights include:
- Which Employees 'Need' to Return to the Office? Some firms are taking a holistic approach to determining who will return to the office, i.e. considering each employee's 'persona,' taking into account their department as well as specific job function to consider if continued working from home is appropriate versus mandating a return to office for all.
- Top Drivers and Metrics to Repopulate Offices & Estimated Reopening Dates We recently conducted a benchmarking survey to ask members what factors are most important to their decision making with regard to reopening offices. We found the most common factors firms are considering in planning for office re-population were infection rates, executive direction on priority of repopulating offices, hospitalization rates, and local social distancing requirements.
- Dramatically Shrinking Office Real Estate Footprints Several members have reported firms' plans to dramatically shrink their real estate footprint, with one firm reducing by 40% globally, as operations have moved to primarily remote. Several members at a recent weekly Member Forum reported plans to sell office buildings, or decline to renew leases on rented spaces. One member reported in addition to closing and consolidating several office spaces, there are plans in place for the remaining office buildings to be converted into more collaborative spaces (conference rooms, hoteling space, etc.).
- Potential Permanent Shift to Remote Work While some firms have reported that their management expects an eventual return to fully in-office operations, several firms agreed that their employees will not return to five days a week in-office any time soon, if ever. Rather, we will see a hybrid approach, where the majority of employees will primarily work from home (visiting the office potentially one or two days per week) and be able to access office, meeting, or conference spaces on an as-needed basis.
- Rethinking Duty of Care and Related GSOC Support Members are examining the changing corporate support model for the average employee working remotely as these changes become more permanent, i.e. moving from focusing on corporate facilities primarily to more robust focus on employee residences / home offices (or other remote workplaces). This is impacting responsibilities, functions and modes of delivery for all support areas from corporate security to wider HR, IT, etc.
- Employee Camaraderie, Relationships Deteriorating? Personnel Management Challenges Remote work and a lack of face-to-face, formal and informal interaction has brought challenges to employee camaraderie, mentor relationships, and personnel management, etc. One member reported the difficulty in delivering remote annual performance evaluations. How to maintain a corporate culture and esprit de corps? Potential strategies to address these challenges virtually must be explored."
