Do office desks need to be 2m apart?
Do office desks need to be 2m apart? The government’s current guidelines advise that workers should maintain social distancing when they are at their workstations. As previously mentioned, this means that work areas should comply with the two-metre rule, or at least one metre plus risk mitigations if two metres is not possible, such as using side-to-side or back-to-back working, rather than face-to-face.
From June 21st, the government has said that it hopes to be in a position to remove all social distancing rules, meaning that in theory, you will no longer be required to comply with this guidance when it comes to the layout of your office space.
However, that’s not to say that you have to ditch the rules completely once June 21st rolls around. To ensure that your employees feel safe and comfortable, and to help keep the spread of infection to a minimum, you could choose to incorporate some elements of the current guidelines, even though this will no longer be legally required.
For example, you could choose to stick to the two-metre rule, or at least introduce some distance between workstations, and you could even make back-to-back or side-to-side working the new normal for your employees. To get employees used to the idea of social distancing in the workplace, you may want to use floor paint or tape too.
To keep the two-metre rule in place as best you can, you could invest in more compact, modular style desking options, and you might also want to introduce savvy, space-saving storage solutions that allow you to make the most of the space you have so that it’s easier for your employees to be spaced apart from each other