Covid-Era Workplace Solutions
Keep Employees & Guests safer with Barriers and Partitions
As businesses have begun their return to work (and some have found themselves under renewed restrictions), employers are beginning to come to terms with the reality of a longer-term need for precautions and additional safety measures. While some of the make-shift ideas around creating a place of work that is safe for employees and guests allowed companies to “make it work” for the initial phased return, an understanding that we may be facing another year or more of Covid safety needs has begun to set in. With some luck we may see a vaccine approved in early 2021, but it will certainly be several months after that before a significant amount of the general population has been able to receive it, which leaves us with those “make-shift solutions” for longer than many anticipated. The alternative is to make the best of that need and perhaps improve on those solutions in both function and appearance.
The cheap plastic sneeze-guard has become an unfortunate cliche, which itself is better than draped plastic sheeting often used for larger spans. While not only being a constant ugly reminder of a pandemic we’d rather forget, they’re often fragile and not ideal for how we’d like our spaces to work. That unsightliness is bad enough in a workplace where we might spend half of our waking day, but in a place where we welcome guests into what we hope is an inviting experience, it becomes even more problematic for the bottom line. Compounding these issues is a pre-pandemic desire for openness in interior spaces which resulted in a limited ability to separate those occupying a space.
The aforementioned guards and sheeting were a static (fixed) set of solutions suited to counters and desks but what about entire rooms? A real solution might be an operable wall that is translucent or even transparent to maintain the openness and light we’ve been striving for in workspaces. Operable walls come in many forms in terms of functionality and design. While they can act as a room divider, when specified well they can keep a unified, flowing feel to a space that actually enhances it. Room dividers with these benefits made a lot of sense before Covid, but make even more sense now where we want and need to be out amongst others but are required to have some separation.
With the ability to create a cool, modern look or a warm and richly textured style, Raydoors can blend with a variety of aesthetics to become an integral part of a design. Numerous custom options take the tailored-to-your-space possibilities even further. Most importantly, Raydoor can work in most interior settings to add versatility and help safeguard people. A moving divider can be designed to completely disappear when not in use as with our Sliding Pocket Wall, they can have a swinging egress door for office meeting rooms or dining spaces as with some of our Stacking systems, or they can simply fold out of the way. A Sliding Wall allows doors to telescope outward easily with only the need to pull the leading door, and all of our systems eschew the need for a floor track with innovative, patented guiding hardware.
Our range of offering includes premium, long-lasting laminates that are easy to clean, contemporary wood veneers and resilient acrylics that allow for lighter, easier to move panels. And beyond our panels that move, we also have our Barrier line of products for when you do need something that sits atop a desk or counter or just freestanding on the floor. Raydoor Barriers utilize the same elegant finishes as our doors and our unique techniques for building panels for some added sense of permanence and style when upgrading from your temporary sneeze-guard.