India’s largest co-working startup, Awfis, has established partnership with 13 international co-working companies to form Workplace Operator Readiness Council (WORC). The main aim of WORC is to develop new guidelines to help minimize the risk of COVID-19 spread in the co-working places.
These mutually agreed guidelines will be implemented as and when the global lockdown is lifted. The WORC is also supported by 20 advisors including Former Acting U.S. Secretary of Labor Seth Harris. International Companies from the architecture, engineering, design, and real estate sectors are also part of this advisory group. This includes companies like CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield, Gensler, and Hines.
Some of the other co-working companies (apart from Awfis) that are part of the WORC group include Convene, Fora, Found 8 Great Room and Hana.
“The way we work and run our business has changed many folds due to COVID 19. The transition back to a post COVID phase would be a challenge to many businesses. To help companies across the globe return to a physical workplace efficiently and effectively, Awfis along with global workspace providers is collaborating to create a playbook that would advise and address both functional and behavioral aspects that require re-evaluation and re-alignment,” said Amit Ramani, CEO & Founder, Awfis.
He added “the playbook would also provide a list of best practices that would help business owners ensure a healthy & safe work environment for their employees and clients.”
Commenting on WORC, Former Acting U.S. Secretary of Labor Seth Harris commented “The safe and healthy transition back to the workplace is a top priority for workers and businesses of all kinds. Defining and implementing the protections that will make that return possible given each workplace’s particular circumstances will involve a collaborative, comprehensive approach that brings our collective expertise to bear.”
With half of the world under lockdown due to ongoing COVID 19 crisis, co-working sector has been amongst the worst effected sectors. Today most of the co-working companies are wearing a deserted look, which is severely going to impact the profitability of the entire industry.
But now the bigger challenge for co-working industry is to develop return-to-office guidelines to cope with coronavirus once the global lockdown is lifted. Many industry experts claim that coronavirus pandemic has brought unforeseeable challenges for the co-working industry and is not going to be easy to overcome them.
Meanwhile, several co-working companies have already established health and hygiene guidelines that are geared towards establishing social distance between employees, sanitization of common shared spaces so and so forth.
WORC will harness these and other solutions to ensure basic new protocols are actionable and together with the Council’s advisors, develop leading new guidelines for workplace operators to help minimize the risk of COVID-19 spread at work.
