By Chip Cutter | Photographs by Natalie Keyssar for The Wall Street Journal
Companies reopening their workplaces are wrestling with a thorny
problem: who should come back soonest.
International Business Machines Corp. prioritized scientists
working in quantum computer labs when it reopened a New York
research hub earlier this summer, figuring they had the hardest
time doing their jobs from home. Payroll processor Automatic Data
Processing Inc. has relied upon a dashboard that offers a regularly
updated view of who's willing to come in and who'd prefer to stay
home.
Such a mix of technology, local regulations and subjective
factors like employee sentiment is guiding reopening decisions at
several companies.
Real-estate startup SquareFoot Inc. gave about half its initial
seats to brokers after an internal survey determined they needed
the physical space more than, say, engineers. Seniority has
factored into other decisions. CenterPoint Energy Inc., a
Houston-based company that delivers electricity in the state of
Texas and elsewhere, has asked officers and director-level
employees who had been working remotely to return in recent
weeks.
But deciding who comes back can get complicated, fast. Some
employers remain wary of potential legal liabilities if workers get
sick on the job, while others worry about opening themselves to
discrimination claims by excluding certain groups. Companies also
want to avoid pressuring employees to return before they're ready.
But they are mindful of "people's feelings being bruised when
you're told you're not an essential person" and should remain
remote, says SquareFoot President Michael Colacino.
The risks of bringing people back came into sharper focus this
week when JPMorgan Chase & Co. had one employee test positive
and then had to send home a group that had come in close contact
with the individual, according to a person close to the finance
giant. The company, which has been gradually bringing people back
since June, had just announced plans to increase capacity. It is
continuing with that effort despite the setback, a spokesman
said.
"We haven't seen any meaningful increases in cases," the
spokesman said.
As they navigate the complexities, companies are considering a
mix of measures including employee preferences and the technical
and social aspects of their jobs. Where possible, they are
automating the decision-making process to take the emotion out of
it.
In planning for a return to SquareFoot's Midtown Manhattan
office, Mr. Colacino and his colleagues knew not all employees
could come back at once while maintaining proper distancing. So
executives at the 67-person company asked teams to complete
self-assessments about why they might need to use the
8,000-square-foot space. Managers ranked how often their teams
required face-to-face collaboration, how employees got to work and
whether they would benefit from in-office amenities such as shared
whiteboards.
The company's real-estate brokers, who often visit properties
around the city but need a home base during the day, got about half
of the 27 available seats. Engineering staffers got fewer
spots.
"We're not overloading the space," Mr. Colacino says.
SquareFoot is developing a reservation system backed by an
algorithm that evaluates requests to use office space. Being able
to point to a dispassionate arbiter should help defuse frustrations
about having to stay home, Mr. Colacino says.
"It takes the emotion out of the whole thing," he says. "That's
the benefit of doing it in an automated way, because what a
nightmare to be the person that has to kind of do a Sophie's Choice
on your employees."
IBM developed tools, used both internally and by clients, that
incorporate local health data and other signals to help bosses
decide whether they can safely reopen a site. An app assigns
workers staggered arrival times and points them to desks or
conference rooms that have been recently cleaned. IBM has about
1,000 office locations globally; about 140 of those have either
reopened or will be soon for a limited number of employees, the
company said.
The quantum-computing scientists were among the first 10% of
staffers to return to a facility in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., in
June, due to the need for lab equipment and other limitations of
remote work, says Joanne Wright, an IBM vice president who has been
helping to oversee the company's return-to-work efforts. In other
locations, staffers working on mainframe computers or servers used
by clients returned first.
"We're really trying to take more of a role-based discussion" in
reopening, she says, noting the vast majority of IBM employees can
continue to work remotely through at least the end of the year.
One of the difficulties in bringing people back is scheduling
employees on the same team to work in an office without creating
undue risk, says Don Weinstein, a vice president who leads product
and technology teams at ADP, which reopened its New Jersey
headquarters to a small number of workers this summer.
Many companies, including ADP, ask some staffers to come in on
alternating days. "I want to be able to split teams up so that if
we have something that happens on a Monday, and it has a potential
spreader effect, I don't knock out a whole team," Mr. Weinstein
says.
ADP developed a tool for its clients to regularly ask employees
how they feel about returning. Employees can designate in an app if
they are able to return in person. If they answer no, they can
elaborate with reasons such as "health concerns" or "lack of
child/family member care." More than 200 companies are now using
the product.
Other companies say they will operate on a strictly voluntary
basis once they deem it safe to bring some employees back. The
online doctor-appointments service Zocdoc Inc. says it will not
require any employees to return to its New York office until at
least after Labor Day 2021, even if its office reopens before
then.
"It is one of the challenges of this virus: No matter how much
we want to be done with it, we need to wait to return to normalcy
until it's done with us," says Oliver Kharraz, the company's CEO,
who is also a physician. "If you're not manufacturing anything, and
you are set up to work remotely, you don't need to add to the
burden of the overall risk that we're taking as a society by
bringing your employees back in just because that's how you
operated before the pandemic."
Being among the first back in an office can be jarring,
employees say. Cafeterias may serve nothing but pre-packaged food.
Parking lots sit empty. Just a few employees may be spread across
an entire floor of a building.
"What they were looking for was that social interaction, and
their memories of that was a full building," says Bruno Vanhaelst,
chief sales and marketing officer at Sodexo SA, the food-service
and facilities company, who notes details such as the greeting at
the door or the positioning of desks can make a return more
enjoyable.
"It's actually not fun to be alone on the floor," he says. "I'd
rather be home."
-- David Benoit contributed to this article.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 19, 2020 00:15 ET (04:15 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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