COVID-19 and the Future of Office Furniture
COVID-19 safety recommendations for your office furniture
New York City business owners from large and small companies are making daily decisions to ensure employee safety. These decisions include updating HVAC systems, investing in new technology that allows for seamless remote work, adhering to new social distancing guidelines, and converting to a contact-free office where possible while keeping surfaces as clean as possible — all while wearing a damn mask. Amid all of this, you may be wondering how to handle your office furniture? Do you need to buy new furniture? How can you keep what you have as safe as possible?
We recently chatted with our friends at Office Resources to answer these questions and discuss “the future of office furniture.” Before COVID-19, office furniture and design were already trending in a contact-less, easy-to-clean, disposable, and sustainable direction. If you bought any new furniture over the past decade or recently redesigned or retrofitted your office spaces, you’re going to be in good shape — a small comfort, we hope.
Office Resources provided us with a list of COVID-19 safety recommendations for your office furniture:
Let’s start with the obvious — office furniture should be easy to clean with cleaning chemicals, bleach included; furniture surfaces and materials should be easy to clean, non-porous, and anti-bacterial / anti-microbial. You can replace the fabric with vinyl and metal with laminate as these are less porous and easier to clean. Again where you can, ensure workstations–desks, chairs, tables–are moveable and can easily be rearranged for a socially distancing friendly workflow as more and more employees return to work.
The good news? You don’t have to spend a lot of money to make some critical changes. Below are some cost-effective furniture suggestions to help keep your employees safe:
We understand it’s an overwhelming time for decision-makers; hearing about how you need to update your office furniture to keep your employees safe is daunting when you may be struggling to pay your rent. The positive news is that you may have already implemented some of these changes. Many offices had implemented some or all of the above with flexibility and productivity in mind, including contactless technology way before COVID-19 (when was the last time you touched a faucet in a high traffic bathroom?).
Should you have questions or want specific recommendations for updated office furniture, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us and we will connect you to Office Resources.
