WORKSPACE REBOOT Tech companies prepare for employees’ eventual return to offices
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When the headquarters of Mission Bio reopens next week, employees will find that many of the familiar perks they enjoyed before Silicon Valley went into lockdown have changed.
Instead of the communal trays of catered lunches served a few times a week, each employee will get his or her own boxed meal. The snacks will remain free, but the soda machine and tub of almonds will be replaced with canned beverages, bottled water and individually wrapped protein bites.
One new benefit: Every two weeks, the startup plans to provide Covid-19 tests onsite to any staff member who wants one.
Mission Bio is returning to the office employees to the office, conduct temperature sooner than most businesses in northern checks, keep people apart and California. Officials have extended create a health checklist, CEO Tim stay-at-home orders through the end of Cook told employees in a virtual meeting May, and some of the largest technology last month. He said the Cupertino, companies have indicated that they California, headquarters won’t reopen may keep offices closed for even longer. until early June, at the earliest.
Mission Bio, which develops cellular Google, whose campuses are designed chemistry technology, said it decided to to draw employees to their reopen after consulting local officials many cafeterias and volleyball courts, who determined that the startup’s will allow some necessary employees cancer research qualifies as essential. to return in June or July, with safety
“Cancer didn’t work from home,” measures in place. Sundar Pichai, the said Nigel Beard, the chief technology CEO of Google’s parent company, officer. Alphabet, has told employees that most
The startup’s preparations for a of them likely will be working from return to the office offer a window into home for the rest of the year. the unique challenges of adapting the Facebook Inc. is looking at ways to Silicon Valley workspace to a pandemic. reconfigure its open-floor plan but is in Mission Bio has an open-floor no hurry to return because most employees plan, a mainstay of the tech office that’s can do their jobs from home, entirely incompatible with social distancing David Wehner, the chief financial guidelines. officer, said on Bloomberg Television.
The company will keep the office Amazon.com Inc. told corporate staff open seven days a week and ask employees around the world that if they are able to select shifts, so that only a to work effectively from home, they third of staff are present at a time. The can stay there until at least October. lab stations are designed to be communal, Those who come in will be given face but researchers will be required to coverings. work solo. Employees will have their On the day tech workers finally do temperatures checked by thermometer go back, the first change many will guns upon arrival and will be asked notice is on their morning commute. whether they or their family members The shuttle buses provided by larger have had coughs, fevers or trouble companies may not operate at full breathing. capacity, and some employers might
The biggest tech companies are encourage people to drive to avoid taking similar steps for when they public transportation. Upon arrival, finally return to campus. Apple Inc. they’ll find redesigned lobbies. intends to stagger the reintroduction of To funnel thousands of workers safely, companies are looking to use design tricks like stickers on the floor or carefully placed furniture to create barriers, said Primo Orpilla, co-founder of the San Francisco-based interior design company Studio O+A, whose clients include Microsoft Corp., Slack Technologies Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc.
Tech companies are particularly concerned with changes that could compromise their carefully curated aesthetic. Nobody wants rope barriers that make people feel like they’re at an airport, Orpilla said. They’re looking for an artistic version of crowd control.
Many companies are realizing that the open office — once considered forward-thinking for the way a lack of separation between workers fosters collaboration — is unsustainable.
“Maybe that was innovative,” said Andrew Holmes, the director of marketing at Loftwall, a Dallas-based maker of room dividers and desk partitions. “Now it just feels like a place for germs to run wild.”
Sales of Loftwall dividers have at least doubled since the coronavirus outbreak. Apple, Google, Microsoft and Tesla Inc. are among the companies that have placed orders with Loftwall in the last 18 months, Holmes said.
A cubicle revival might not be enough, said Philip Martin, head of security at San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. If a colleague coughs while standing up, for example, he or she could infect neighbors.
Martin thinks officials might set guidelines for offices, such as reducing the number of people allowed in buildings or requiring barriers between workers. He’s making early preparations for Coinbase’s eventual return, but the company said it doesn’t expect things to get back to normal until January or later.
Some workplaces are more challenging to redesign.
Xwing, a startup developing autonomous aircraft, used to conduct biweekly test flights at an airfield in Concord, California, before the pandemic. The company would pack three or four employees equipped with headsets about an arm’s length apart from one another inside a small vehicle.
The founder, Marc Piette, is trying to determine whether it’s feasible to have fewer engineers in the air and whether microphones would still be able to pick up their voices when wearing face masks.
“We’re all about flying aircraft autonomously,” Piette said. “If we can’t fly aircraft, it becomes a difficult problem to solve.”