Be safe, and stern, heading back to the office
Experts say workers must feel comfortable calling people out on unsafe behaviours
After sitting dormant over the summer, some offices are flicking on the lights, reconfiguring cubicles and posting signs to remind workers to keep their distance and follow good hygiene practices.
Even with COVID-19 safety measures in place, the return to the office will inevitably result in awkward situations. How to deal with the person who shows up coughing or gets too close for comfort? How to respond to an invitation to the after-work social gathering? “PRE-COVID, many often thought that good office etiquette — or any proper etiquette — required us to be polite and forgiving, even if that meant condoning some bad behaviours. That certainly wasn’t the case then, and it’s not the case now,” said Linda Allan, a Toronto-area management consultant specializing in workplace conduct and business etiquette.
“I’ve always told my participants and clients that people need to feel comfortable doing and saying what’s right; they need to have the courage of their etiquette convictions.”
Definitive numbers are hard to come by, but commercial real estate firm Colliers says its downtown Toronto offices currently sit at 12 per cent to 15 per cent occupancy.
“Anecdotally we have heard similar occupancy rates among the large landlords — Kingsett, Oxford and Dream, for example,” said Pamela Smith, Colliers’ director of communications in Canada.
A KPMG survey of just over 1,000 Canadians released in August showed that 54 per cent of respondents said they feared returning to the office. Six in 10 Canadians said they would refuse to go to work if they didn’t feel it was safe.
Eighty-two per cent, however, said they trusted their employers
to take the necessary precautions.
Across Canada, various levels of government have trotted out guidelines to help employers mitigate the risk of exposure. Among their recommendations: remind employees to stay home if they’re feeling ill; install hand-sanitizing stations throughout the office; avoid handshakes and multiperson meetings; use floor markers to promote social distancing and one-way traffic in narrow corridors; close off nonessential common areas; stagger working hours; and increase cleaning of high-touch surfaces, like elevator buttons, photocopiers. “Employers need to make sure that the workplace is safe and functional and that the return-to-office process provides comfort to and builds trust with employees,” said Kerris Hougardy, vice-president of people services for Colliers in North America.
Expect that there will be tweaks to those measures, Hougardy
adds. “Some adjustments for Colliers have included giving our people access to coffee. When we first began repopulating our offices, we had to shut down our communal kitchens. This was having a negative effect on people being in the office — they’d have to take more elevators, go to coffee shops more frequently — and so installing touchless coffee machines made a big difference.”
Hougardy says they’ve also been making changes to their signage to be more “friendly and uplifting — even humorous,” while still being instructional.
Inevitably, as people spend more time back in the office, their guards may go down or they may forget social-distancing rules, Allan says.
That’s when people will need to speak up and not be afraid about coming across as rude.
“It’s going to take some courage for people to say, ‘Given our current health situation, would you please abide by the guidelines? Would you please step back a bit or wait over there while I finish here?’ ”
Of course, you don’t want to be overly harsh, Allan says.
There will be a natural desire for people to want to socialize again outside of work. Table manners that were relevant before are even more relevant now, Allan says.
“People talking with food in their mouth, which means food and spittle is flying,” she said. Her recommendation? “Before these social events take place let’s just say, ‘Let’s go over some guidelines and basic table manners and rules of etiquette around food that have to be more in focus now because of COVID.’ ”
But what can employers do to ensure that all these rigid rules don’t sink office morale?
Hougardy says that over the summer, Colliers held outdoor sales meetings, food bank collection drives and small-group leisure activities, such as pitch and putt outings and bringyour-own-food picnics.
“We also encouraged virtual morale building — regular check-ins, team yoga sessions, sharing successes and challenges openly … virtual happy hours, videos from the CEO and our other leaders.” Rather than doing away with common areas altogether, Allan suggests that employees still be allowed to use break rooms or water-cooler areas but perhaps with tables and chairs repositioned to allow staff to maintain distance.
“Have some semblance of normality, of some social interaction, because that’s what human beings seek the most and need the most,” she said.