How occupancy sensors can support social distancing in your workplace

With global vaccine rollouts and offices slowly refilling with staff, workplace teams must consider the safest way to manage COVID capacity limits in the office and how to adapt their spaces for our ‘new normal. From adhering to social-distancing regulations to actively monitoring where your staff are around the office, the traditional workplace needs to adopt the right technology tools to thrive.

Here’s how workplace sensors can support your organization’s return-to-work strategy.

Social distancing in the workplace

With lumpy vaccine rollouts and periodic outbreaks, pandemic safety measures such as social distancing, hand-sanitiser stations and QR code check-ins appear as though they will be a facet of our work lives for some time. Some experts are even predicting that masks and social distancing will continue for years, long after the majority of the global population has been vaccinated.

So what does that mean for workplaces? While the number of remote and hybrid workers will undoubtedly rise, physical offices remain critical to most industries. For these businesses, HR leaders will need to ensure the appropriate social-distancing guidelines are adhered to. Additionally, property leaders in commercial real estate (CRE) will need to work closely with the businesses in their buildings to make sure any COVID-specific laws and guidelines are maintained.

For businesses operating in Australia, “it is your duty under work health and safety laws to manage the risk of a person in your workplace spreading and contracting COVID-19, including the risk that persons with COVID-19 enter the workplace,” according to Safe Work Australia. “Physical distancing is one of the key ways to lower the risk of COVID-19 being spread or contracted at your workplace.” The agency advises that businesses should structure their social-distancing policies according to the current health advice from their state or territory.

To manage social distancing actively, that means you need to consider factors like:

• How workers interact with each other (physically or purely online) on work tasks.
• The layout of your workplace.
• What facilities are available and how they are set out (e.g. furniture in break rooms; staggered meal times in common areas).
• Policy for deliveries, contractors and visitors to the workplace.
• Cap on how many people can be in an elevator at one time. This will be a key topic of conversation between CRE managers and business decision-makers.

Historical reporting vs active monitoring

Pre-pandemic, many workplaces would have relied on sporadic or batched historical reporting methods to estimate how many people were in the office at one time. Whether through a digital or analogue check-in/checkout system, this basic people-count information – e.g. staff numbers relative to workplace capacity – would have been extrapolated and used to inform future decision-making about the organization’s space needs.

However, living and working in a world where the coronavirus spreads quickly when people are in close proximity, there’s an urgent need to switch from purely historical reporting to more active monitoring. This allows managers to see critical information in real-time and make decisions based on that data.

Not only do real-time workplace sensors provide up-to-the-second updates on staff numbers in the office, they also have the capability to deliver a range of end-user data that can contribute to better workplace management. XY Sense for example provides:

• The ability to record room occupancy and floorplan position down to 1ft (30cm) every 2 seconds.
• Real-time sensor coverage of up to 20 desks per sensor.
• Occupancy monitoring and alerts for COVID-safety.
• Sensor-driven space booking.
• Totally anonymous data using only the X and Y coordinates – which makes it InfoSec and HR-approved.

By capturing data in real-time and with such accurate positioning, occupancy sensors like XY Sense deliver a new kind of in-depth workplace monitoring solution for property teams managing social distancing in the workplace.

How sensors can support real-time workplace social distancing

In addition to the wealth of office occupancy data that workplace sensors can provide, the most pressing issue for HR teams and property leaders is about how to effectively manage social-distancing issues. Aside from physically stationing ‘COVID safety officers’ around the workplace – which is in itself fraught with risks – the best solution is technology.

Workplace sensors like XY Sense can be customized to meet your particular needs. With social distancing, for example, your sensor system can be set up to monitor in real-time any instance of a social-distance breach occurring. When the sensors capture a breach, a text alert can be sent out to nominated safety marshals. Additionally, you can log the social distancing breach and analyze trends around the spaces and zones where they are most likely to occur again in the future. Then, you can take the appropriate action (e.g. shifting workstations so staff can be more socially distant) and rest easy knowing that no social-distance breaches are flying under the radar.

Top considerations for your business

Now that workers are returning to the workplace, it is critical that you put in place a robust, actionable return-to-work strategy that involves how social distancing will be managed.

Ask yourself: how quickly do you want to allow staff to come back into the office, and what percentage will be manageable? Will you give certain teams the option to continue working from home, or will there be a need to stagger work times to reduce foot traffic and potential social-distance breaches? If people are already back in the workplace, what do you need to retroactively deploy to ensure social-distancing risks are reduced?

There’s also the key consideration of how staff report – and how you manage – their physical attendance in the workplace. If you can’t measure this accurately and in real-time, the potential fallout – both financially and for the company’s reputation – could be devastating. On the flip side, by plugging this capability gap with a workplace sensor solution, you can manage social distancing up to the second while leveraging powerful analytics that informs future decision-making about how your workplace operates.

XY Sense is a market leader in workplace sensors that provide real-time social distancing monitoring and reports. You can request a demo with our team or find out more about the value of workplace sensors at the XY Sense blog.