Risk Mananegement
Returning to Work A ‘Post-Pandemic’ perspective on Workplace Violence Concerns By: Joseph Murphy, Prosegur Security
I was on a company sponsored trip in the Caribbean during the last week of February 2020, enjoying sun, sand, my colleagues, great food and adult beverages with tiny umbrellas and pieces of fruit floating on the surface. To say I was having a great time would be an understatement. No news, no television, no stress, very little email – life was, as they say, Good!
The truth is, none of us really knows what has changed for those around us, for our co-workers, for the building suppliers, tenants and their employees, the property management teams or for anyone else who enters the property. Effectively, we are all complete strangers now, like we came back to a very different world than the one we had left a short time ago.
A week later, back in “the real world,” reality began to change quickly as our planet spiraled into a pandemic that occupied every social and public media platform. The number of cases climbed, hospitalizations skyrocketed, supply chain concerns were apparent, and workplaces began to change, quickly, going from high-density, busy places to empty buildings, sometimes with minimal management presence, often with no one at all. Major buildings in top cities went from daily occupancies of three to five thousand to less than a few hundred. Our commercial real estate world changed, almost overnight.
Whether our properties and the tenants within those properties have come back to full operations, hybrid operations or some variation thereof, the reality is that everyone has gone through an event that almost no one has experienced before. A pandemic that has touched every aspect of everyone’s life. Many have been very fortunate and have avoided significant illness, or significant impact to themselves or their families. But many have not been this fortunate. For some, the experiences of the past year to year and ahalf have changed their lives forever, in ways we cannot even imagine or ever fully understand.
“The New Normal” Fast forward 20 months from March 2020 to October 2021 and the Commercial Real Estate world is changing again. Tenants are returning to buildings, visitors, guests, and others are returning to the property, food courts and on property restaurants are enjoying the presence of patrons again. But something has changed. Everyone is a bit nervous, a bit cautious, a bit uncertain. Is this “the new normal” people speak of, or has “the old normal” just not returned yet? What has happened over the past 20 months? Except for some new touchless amenities, anti-bacterial gel pads on elevator buttons, hand sanitizer stations in the lobbies and stickers on the elevator floor to tell us where to stand, things appear much the same as when we left more than a year and a half ago.
18
Insight • Issue 4, 2021
Some people have suffered critical illness, critical financial stress, loss of friends and/or family members. Many with children and other family members at home were balancing school and work sometimes in spaces never designed to support that level of interaction effectively. There are interpersonal challenge, family pressures, , financial pressures, and concerns about work. Many are asking: should I be there, can I do my job remotely, or as well as I once did? Will my job still be there when this all ends?
The stressors on individuals over the past 20 months are unimaginable. We literally do not know what challenges, stresses, or losses someone has experienced and how they are coping with those issues today, or if they are coping with those issues today.
