Offices taking steps, extra safety precautions, to start to bring employees back to work - KCRG

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) - The pandemic has forced many eastern Iowa offices to transition from desk jobs to having employees work remotely. Now many businesses are starting to bring employees back- with some specific safety measures in place.

Dan Thies, the President of OPN Architects, tries to lead his business by example- and when it comes to bringing employees back to one of their four offices, including in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, they have been discussing a plan for weeks.

“We talked about new normal, and this is new normal,” Thies said.

Thies, who has led the company for more than 40 years, knows in leading architects like himself, creativity is key.

“It’s a collaborative process," Thies said. "So it’s about people communicating and sharing ideas, working shoulder to shoulder solving problems.”

The same can be said for planning to return to work as novel coronavirus pandemic restrictions were lifted. But now more than ever, those shoulders are six feet apart- and sometimes, much more through a computer screen.

“As people are walking by with a face cover on, it takes a little getting used to,” Thies said.

OPN Architects just recently started allowing staff to come back- under some strict guidelines featured in a 15-page booklet written and assembled by leaders at the firm, using help from recent office employer guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Our break rooms are closed," Thies explained. "We have signs throughout the studio that identify occupancies of all enclosed spaces, all work stations honor the six foot distancing.” Thies also said while employees are not required to wear masks at their desks since they are at least six feet apart, they are requiring staff to wear masks when they get up from their desks and in common areas.

Still, less than half of their staff has returned back to work on a regular basis. But Thies says that is okay, citing the importance of employees feeling safe and taking care of their family first.

“We chose to err on the most conservative path we could take in order to have everybody feel comfortable that every step is being considered to be as safe as possible,” Thies said.

Erring on the side of caution has been popular among workplaces, including at MediRevv in Coralville, where the parking lot will stay mostly empty for a while. Brad Baldwin, the President of MediRevv, explained they are in the very beginning steps of determining how to bring employees back to the office, taking it slowly compared to their plan to help staff work from home when the pandemic began.

“Over a span of three weeks, we were able to move 96-percent of our employees to a 100-percent work-from-home scenario,” Baldwin said.

MediRevv is self-described as handling the “business side of health care.” Baldwin says he is still unsure when those employees will come back. But he and other leaders with the company are looking to the CDC, its employees, and the hospitals they work with for guidance.

“As we work to, in some ways, mirror them, learn from them, make sure that we’re positioned to continue to serve them, that’s a huge amount of data that we can take advantage of,” Baldwin said.

Clearly expressing a universal theme during an uncertain time: unlike in architecture, there is no exact blueprint for the normal that comes next.

“Every group of leadership are going to have to look at this with a perspective through their own lens and determine what’s best for their path going forward,” Thies said.

Copyright 2020 KCRG. All rights reserved.

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