Is this the end of the open office? At Silicon Valley tech companies, staggered shifts and boxed meals are in, vending machines and snack tubs out
- Apple plans to keep staff apart and stagger their return, while Google and Facebook are redesigning their open floor plans to increase social distancing
- Smaller start-ups face the same issues with their communal spaces. Firms will look to make crowd control subtle rather than airport-like, interior designer says
When the headquarters of Mission Bio reopens on Monday, employees will find many of the familiar perks they enjoyed before Silicon Valley went into lockdown have changed. Instead of the communal trays of catered lunches served a few times a week, each employee will get their own boxed meal.
The snacks will remain free, but the vending machine and tub of almonds will be replaced with canned drinks, bottled water and individually wrapped protein bites.
One new benefit: every two weeks, the start-up plans to provide Covid-19 tests on site to any staff member who wants one.
Mission Bio is returning to the office sooner than most businesses in Northern California. Officials have extended stay-at-home orders until the end of May, and some of the largest technology companies have indicated that they may keep offices closed for even longer.
Mission Bio, which develops cellular chemistry technology, said it decided to reopen after consulting local officials who determined that the start-up’s cancer research qualifies as essential. “Cancer didn’t work from home,” said Nigel Beard, the chief technology officer.
He said the Cupertino, California, headquarters won’t reopen until at least early June and workers would likely be reintroduced on a “staggered basis”.
Google, whose campuses are designed to draw employees together to the many cafeterias and volleyball courts, doesn’t plan to return until at least June, either. The company expects to make changes to its open office design before staff return, said a person familiar with the preparations.
Facebook is looking at ways to reconfigure its open floor plan but is in no hurry to return because most employees can do their jobs from home, David Wehner, the chief financial officer, said on Bloomberg Television.
Amazon told corporate staff across the world that if they are able to work effectively from home, they can stay there until at least October. Those who come in will be given face coverings.
On the day tech workers finally do go back, the first change many will notice is on their morning commute. The shuttle buses provided by larger companies may not operate at full capacity, and some employers might encourage people to drive to avoid public transport. Upon arrival, they’ll find redesigned lobbies.
To funnel thousands of workers safely, companies are looking to use design tricks like stickers on the floor or carefully placed furniture to create barriers, said Primo Orpilla, co-founder of the San Francisco-based interior design company Studio O+A, whose clients include Microsoft, Slack and Uber.
Tech companies are particularly concerned with changes that could compromise their carefully curated aesthetic. Nobody wants rope barriers that make people feel like they’re at an airport, Orpilla said. They’re looking for an artistic version of crowd control.
Many companies are realising that the open office – once considered forward-thinking for the way a lack of separation between workers fosters collaboration – is unsustainable.
“Maybe that was innovative,” said Andrew Holmes, the director of marketing at Loftwall, a Dallas, Texas-based maker of room dividers and desk partitions. “Now it just feels like a place for germs to run wild.”
Sales of Loftwall dividers have at least doubled since the coronavirus outbreak. Apple, Google, Microsoft and Tesla are among the companies that have placed orders with Loftwall in the last 18 months, Holmes said.
A cubicle revival might not be enough, said Philip Martin, head of security at San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. If a colleague coughs while standing up, for example, they could infect neighbours.
Martin anticipates officials might set guidelines for offices, such as reducing the number of people allowed in buildings or requiring barriers between workers. He’s making early preparations for Coinbase’s eventual return, but the company said it doesn’t expect things to get back to normal until January or later.
Some workplaces are more challenging to redesign. Xwing, a start-up developing autonomous aircraft, used to conduct biweekly test flights at an airfield in Concord, California, before the pandemic. The company would pack three or four employees equipped with headsets about an arm’s length apart from one another inside a small, noisy vehicle.
The founder, Marc Piette, is trying to determine whether it’s feasible to have fewer engineers in the air and whether microphones would still be able to pick up their voices when wearing face masks. “We’re all about flying aircraft autonomously,” Piette said. “If we can’t fly aircraft, it becomes a difficult problem to solve.”