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I go to my office 3 days a week and wfh 2 days. My office at home is smaller than my work office and, being in the basement, lacks windows. But I have a nice set of computers/screens, can easily take care of personal work, can walk upstairs and get some sun or eat a snack/lunch, etc. Lots of flexibility/freedom working from home. So much that I’ve had to get strict with myself about my working hours to keep from overdoing it.
At the office it is very quiet because we typically have only 1/3 of employees on any day, sometimes much less. Today so far I have seen one other employee. We have 6’ mandated distancing, all conference and break rooms are closed, one-per-restroom, office doors must be closed, masks in the halls/restrooms, and for cubicles we hung shower curtains from the ceiling to block most airflow. We also added UV lights to the ductwork and regularly replace the filters. If anyone gets a positive test or contact tracing, we sanitize everywhere they were for the past week. We also sanitize the entire building twice a week. Door knobs and high-touch areas are sanitized daily. We have sanitized pads on all push doors, hand rails and other surfaces to prevent the spread of any germs. Temp check on the way in to work and a daily color-coded wrist band to get in, in addition to the usual badge. No lunches together or other congregating.
My home Internet speed is similar to work, but there are some things I have to do in the office (signing documents, checks, etc). As an officer of the company I have a higher level of responsibility for the safety of our employees, and need to be visible as much as circumstances allow (the other two officers cover the days I’m not in the office so one of us is always here, usually two).
We do our own contact tracing in addition to the state’s health dept (we’re faster). We pay for all testing, and pay full wages and benefits for anyone who gets COVID or must quarantine. Anyone who travels out of state (personal, business is forbidden) must complete a travel form to notify us where/when and get a COVID test (negative) before returning to our facilities.
Across our locations (all in one state), we have had a few positive employees and several in home quarantine. None have contact traced to work exposure, which suggests either we’re lucky or all of our measures are helping.
I would love to get back to greeting people, shaking hands, face-to-face meetings and all the rest. That contact is really important for our psychological health, and definitely helps newer employees come up to speed faster. But my guess is that is a 2022 thing unless we can get vaccinated (not sure where we will fall on the priority for that, but I would expect our field people to be high priority and us office drones to be lower). So I am treating this as normal, not temporary. When it changes, we probably won’t return to how we did things a year ago.
On the good news front, we haven’t had significant sick time taken this year as I think all the things we are doing (at work and at home) are keeping away colds and flu too.
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