Workers’ Safety

Returning to the Office: How to Stay Connected and Socially Distant

BY DANIEL BEUNZA & DERIN KENT THE CONVERSATION

Companies around the world are debating how and when to return to the office. Health and safety has taken on a whole new significance in the era of coronavirus. To bring people back safely, the options for office redesign are bewildering. How should desks be arranged to enable social distancing alongside the benefits of being in the same room? And do people need to return for five days a week? Many companies are looking to have some employees work from home, some of the time. But unless careful thinking goes into this, companies run the risk of getting stuck in the middle, achieving neither the benefits of the traditional office nor the safety conferred by the home. Consider, for instance, the 6 Feet Office. This concept, developed by a commercial real estate multinational, Cushman and Wakefield, aims to ensure that employees remain six feet apart at all times. It is achieved by spacing desks, creating oneway people circulation, and including visual signs in the carpeting around each desk so as to nudge people to keep their distance. This idea runs the risk of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. As architecture scholar Kerstin Sailer has noted, its combination of distanced furniture, nudges, and warnings can also stigmatise social interaction, pushing all communication online, even in the office. If that is the case, why not just work from home? Companies need to incorporate an essential lesson from the COVID-19 lockdown: Zoom works surprisingly well. But there are also lots of benefits to informal interaction –something a prearranged video call cannot replicate. In light of this, we propose a hybrid system of the best of both worlds. If fewer people are coming in to maintain social distancing, it is best to have all teams represented. And the office layout must facilitate connections between people rather than keeping them apart.

Planned vs unplanned communication

There’s an important distinction between planned and unplanned communication at work. Unplanned communication typically takes place via serendipitous encounters and, importantly, involves conversations across teams. Here proximity is needed. This is because different teams are typically not part of the same reporting line, and so communication depends on unplanned engagements like overhearing each other talk or chance encounters in the corridor. This can have real business benefits. As one of us has documented in our recent book, unplanned social interaction across nearby desks in a Wall Street trading floor improved the use of financial models. In the case of planned communication, remote conferencing technology has made proximity less important. The reason is that within-team communication typically happens on a planned and routine basis, so all it needs is a digital platform. This message came out clearly from a panel event we organised at the LSE’s Systemic Risk Centre. Charles Bristow, global head of rates trading at investment bank JP Morgan, and one of the panellists, explained that “a team of people trading together on a single product are getting incoming inquiries through the same channels” and “use the same tools”. For that reason, communicating remotely is incredibly easy and can even be more efficient. So physical proximity is primarily needed for unplanned communication. It means remote working can continue at little cost to planned communication. And it potentially means that if companies want to bring limited numbers of people back to the office, they should focus on having at least one member from every team. This will enable cross-team communication, which relies on physical proximity.

Keeping everyone engaged

Another important element of office design to take into account is the extent that it facilitates employee engagement – whether people leave their desks to come into face-to-face contact. This is important for building better relationships between colleagues and company culture. people can engage with each other and collaborate, research in architecture shows that ease of access and facilitating movement can partly compensate for distance. As Sailer has established, in a house where every room is accessible to every other room via a door, connection is far easier than in one where you can only access a given room from the adjoining one. The same degree of distancing between people, in other words, can lead to vastly different levels of engagement. To achieve this connectivity (while maintaining social distance), companies can leverage the staggered return of employees to remove some desks and create a corridor around the periphery of their open plan offices, giving employees the chance to easily access each other. Encounters and conversations can be further facilitated by nooks and corners outside such a corridor, so that employees can have quick one-on-ones without blocking circulation. The return to the office after months of remote working gives companies a chance to make their setups more effective. They can incorporate the benefits of remote working, while ensuring people can interact and exchange ideas in a safer way than if they blindly replicated their pre-COVID work arrangements.p Daniel Beunza is an Associate Professor of Management, City, University of London Derin Kent is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Management, Aalto University

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UAW to Face 6 Years of Federal Monitorship

December 14, 2020: The U.S. Department of Justice announced a long-awaited settlement deal with the United Auto Workers (UAW) union. The deal is meant to weed out corruption in the union following a multiyear federal investigation that found 12 UAW officials — including the wife of a former ofAG Schneider Photo courtesy Justice.gov ficial and two former union presidents — guilty of an array funds, receiving bribes and ilof crimes, including embez- legal benefits, and trying to zling union funds and de- cover up the crimes.” The frauding union members. union has already paid back The settlement includes six $15 million in improper years of federal union over- chargebacks, as well as $1.5 sight by a court-appointed in- million to resolve tax issues, dependent monitor. It also according to the U.S. Attorney. allows union members a secret The settlement did not include ballot election where they can any further fines or penalties vote on whether to change for the union, noting that any their constitution to allow for additional charges would the direct election of future come from the pockets of leaders. UAW rank-and-file union members, who have alhave called for direct elections ready lost millions of dollars. in the past as part of the Unite This corruption scandal — All Workers for Democracy which we’ve documented at movement. UAWInvestigation.com — has While the appointed monitor placed a long-lasting black will oversee this election and mark on the UAW’s record. other anti-corruption reforms, Regaining members’ trust he or she will not play a role in won’t happen over night, denegotiating collective bargain- spite current President Rory ing agreements on behalf of Gamble’s promise to ensure the union. The monitor will, the independent monitor’s job however, be able to exercise is a “boring” one — i.e. free of disciplinary power within the any future scandal. union, and should corruption This settlement puts an end concerns continue, the moni- to the years-long investigation torship could be extended for at the UAW. The result is a win longer than the initial six years. for the thousands of auto In a press conference, U.S. workers who have been Attorney Matthew Schneider wronged by a union that was said the goal of the settlement supposed to protect them, and was “genuine democratic re- a crucial first step in holding form” at the UAW, where for- UAW leadership accountable mer leaders have been to its rank-and-file.p convicted of “breaking federal labor laws, stealing union —LaborPains

Statement of NYS AFL-CIO President Mario Cilento on the Met’s Lockout of Local One IATSE

NYC: The dedicated and hard-working stagehands, shop crew members and designers of Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) have been out of work throughout the coronavirus pandemic after the Metropolitan Opera

Washington, D.C.: The Communications Workers of America and AT&T have agreed to extend two contracts covering 24,000 technicians, call center customer support workers and representatives at AT&T's retail stores in 45 states, the District of Columbia, and the Virgin Islands. The “Orange” contract was set to expire on February 11, 2021 and the “Black” contract was set to expire on February 10, 2022. Each contract will be extended by one year. The extension includes a 2.5% wage increase effective on the original contract expiration house shut down. Now, adding insult to injury, the Met has locked out these workers in a despicable attempt to use this crisis as leverage during contract negotiations. It’s a new low. Even worse, Met management is demanding IATSE members take a 30 dates. Benefits remain the same under the existing cost sharing agreement. In addition, groundbreaking job security protections negotiated in 2017 remain in place. This AT&T and CWA also agreed that AT&T Mobility Call Center employees who are temporarily working from home due to the COVID19 pandemic can continue to do so through June of 2021. The CWA AT&T Mobility “Orange” Contract covers workers in the following states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Inpercent pay cut for an indefinite period, in exchange for short term relief payments the Met knows these workers desperately need. It is outrageous and shameful which is why the members of Local One IATSE have the full support of their 2.5 million brothers and sisters of the New York State AFL-CIO. We stand with them and all the unionized workers at the Met in their fight for fairness during these challenging times. We are all in this crisis together but workers, who are already paying such an extraordinary price, cannot and must not be taken advantage of.p

CWA Contract with AT&T Extended for Mobility Workers

—NYS AFL-CIO diana, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming The CWA AT&T Mobility “Black” Contract covers workers in the following states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.p —CWA