Nervously Safe For Work

Our office guidelines for keeping safe in these times

As many companies around the world consider the prospect of coming back to the office, I wanted to share our experience with operating an office during this crisis.

Because our main office is located in Taiwan, we have been on high alert about coronavirus since late January. While Taiwan has not had a lockdown (thanks to swift action on face masks, screening, contact tracing, quarantines, etc), the concern has been ever present, and we have needed to discuss and implement safety measures that help us to operate our office more safely.

Work From Office

The first thing we did was to buy a forehead thermometer and a stash of face masks. (While we expect everyone to bring their own face masks, we prepared some extra ones just in case someone forgot theirs.) We also bought a supply of alcohol spray and set it up near the front door so that people can quickly disinfect their hands.

We put in place some office rules for our team members:

• Take your temperature once per day upon entering the office. We set up a sign-up sheet so people can record their temperature that day. If anyone’s temperature is over 37.5° C (99.5° F), that person should leave the office and work from home.

• Wash your hands with soap every time you enter the office from the outside (e.g., start of day, coming back from lunch).
• Wash all shared cups and utensils carefully with soap. Don’t just rinse with water. Soap destroys viruses. People are also encouraged to bring in their own cups and utensils, and use those instead.
• Wear face masks to protect yourself and others. When people cough, talk or just breathe, droplets get expelled into the air. This is especially an issue in closed spaces such as elevators or conference rooms, so we encourage our team members to wear masks when near others. (Also, outside of work, we advise everyone to wear face masks in crowded places such as stores and subways.)

We also provided guidelines to prevent (potentially) sick people from coming to the office:

• If you have any symptoms, you MUST not come to the office. Stay home if you have any sign of cough, headache, fatigue or fever.
• If you have a fever, do not come to the office until several days after the fever is gone. Even though the fever has subsided, there is still a chance that symptoms may return. Also, you may need time for your immune system to fully recover before going out again.
• If you have any reason to suspect you may have been exposed, please work from home. For example, if you are have been in close proximity with someone (e.g. family member, house mate) who has flu-like symptoms, please work from home. If you’ve been near a confirmed case of COVID-19, then you must self quarantine for 14 days.

To lower the risk of exposure from unknown persons, we have reduced office events and visitors. We used to host several monthly meetups at our office, as well as invite guests every week to join us for Friday lunch. Since the crisis began, the meetups have been canceled or moved to an online format, and we’ve reduced the number of visitors.

Work From Home

To facilitate “Work From Office” at a time like this, we found it was important to be supportive of Work From Home (WFH) and to improve the experience of WFH.

• You may choose to WFH if you want. We encouraged people to work from home for any reason (e.g. concern about safety, child care issues, etc).
• Make WFH participants feel fully involved in meetings. Our meetings are often mixed-mode meetings with some people dialing in from home and some in the conference room. We ask that everyone in the conference room should also join the call on their laptops (muting their mic and speaker) so that the remote people can get a view of everyone in the meeting. (We’ve also used Meeting Owl for this purpose of letting WFH participants see the whole room.)

• Upgrade your home internet and work environment. We found that 1/3 of our team members did not have good WiFi at home (e.g. they were tethering using their phone). We provided some financial support for all our team members to encourage them to upgrade their internet connection and buy equipment they might need.

Alert Levels

In terms of applying these guidelines, the strictness depends on the perceived severity of the situation in the region. To better communicate the level of concern with our team members, we’ve come up with a color-coded alert system:

Green Alert

• Situation: no new cases for an extended period (e.g. one month)
• Follow normal hygiene rules.

Yellow Alert

• Situation: a low number of cases have been found recently
• Follow all the office precautions given above.
• Face masks in the office are encouraged but not required.
• Reduce the number of events, visitors and external meetings.

Orange Alert

• Situation: a moderate number of cases have been found recently (but it’s not an uncontrolled outbreak yet)
• Face masks in meetings are required.
• All office events are canceled. Do not have visitors or meetings unless essential.
• You are encouraged to work from home if you have any concern at all.
• Outside the office, you are recommended to take serious precautions (e.g. wear face masks everywhere).

Red Alert

• Situation: evidence of community outbreak (e.g. a quickly growing number of new cases). Alternately, if a team member is confirmed with COVID-19, we would escalate to Red Alert.
• Everyone should work from home.
• Outside the office, you are recommended to stay at home and avoid non-essential trips outside (even if a shelter-in-place lockdown has not been officially declared yet).

We regularly evaluate the situation (based on the news and latest case numbers) and determine the alert level, which we then announce to the team. Also our guidelines are not frozen — we update them as we learn new things and make new determinations.

Observations

We observed that the percentage of people choosing to WFH goes up and down, depending on the severity of the situation. For example, at Yellow Alert level, we saw around 20% of people working from home, while at Orange Alert level, it went up to 50% of people working from home.

Also, as we increased to Orange Alert and required face masks for in-person meetings, we noticed that a few people have chosen to join meetings using their laptops (from another part of the office) rather than going to the conference room. On the one hand, it took away from the in-person interaction. On the other hand, it puts them on equal footing with the WFH people, and also makes the conference room less crowded.

We recognize that what works for us may not apply for others. We are a 50-person software startup based in a country that has not had an uncontrolled outbreak yet. Since each company has its own considerations and each region has its own coronavirus challenges, it’s up to you to figure out what works best for your team. Another technique that other companies have tried is dividing into A and B teams that alternate going to the office (e.g. for one week, the A-team works at the office and the B-team stays home; then swap in the following week).

Overall, we found that having written guidelines and a framework for the alert level was useful in communicating with our team what was expected of them, and what the escalation path might be. As everyone is trying to figure out how to keep their teams safe in these times, I hope that our examples can give you some ideas for how to make your office NSFW — Nervously Safe For Work!