Employees working from home, schools and restaurants closed. It would seem that such circumstances are not favourable to the development of the commercial property sector. However, surveys indicate that the number of office buildings and warehouses in Poland is growing. What changes is the way they are used. First of all, owners, tenants and managers have to follow the sanitary guidelines and ensure the safety of their employees and guests. TIMATE can help here.
According to CBRE, 96 modern office buildings with the total area of 1.6 million square metres are now being erected in Poland. 41 of them will be put into service this year. E commerce is growing rapidly, so there is a larger demand for warehouse spaces. In the first half of 2020, the lease of such spaces broke the record and reached nearly 2.43 million square metres. It is 25% more than in the same period of 2019, says CBRE report on the storage space market in Poland. Though the real property market is doing fine, owners and lessors have to take additional efforts to make the property space use safe.
How to maintain safety in office buildings and warehouse?
The Ministry of Economic Development, Labour and Technology along with the Chief Sanitary Inspectorate have prepared guidelines for entrepreneurs with respect to the organization of office work. Their goal is to enhance the level of employee safety and minimize the risk of infections as well as to limit the number of interactions within the same area at the same time.
How to adjust offices and warehouses to the new requirements in practice? First of all, employees and guests need to be provided with protective equipment (masks, disinfectants). Secondly, adequate distance has to be maintained between co-workers and there should be more social spaces so as to prevent too many people gathering in kitchens and chill-out rooms. Thirdly, one-way movement system should be organized along with zero-touch door opening systems, if and where possible.
TIMATE can help with all of this.
Audio messages and signals
The TIMATE card offers functions and options that can be effectively used in office buildings and warehouses. First of all, it allows to display any type of messages and transmit audio signals. As such, it can remind of the necessity to disinfect hands or to leave a room where too many people have gathered. The card will also ensure that its owner will keep the required distance from his or her colleagues.
The location function
The system can identify the areas of the premises where employees or guests are located. It can also indicate the routes they take and how they move around. Based on such information, it is possible to designate additional social spaces, the spots for disinfectants or one-way routes allowing for safe movements between rooms or floors.
Touchless door opening
TIMATE enables door opening in the zero-touch mode. Importantly, the system opens doors only to authorized persons, so it minimizes the risk of too many people meeting in one office. A company which rents spaces in an office building has the guarantee that only its own employees can enter their company’s premises. As a result, the safety of both people and information is enhanced.
If such a system already exists in an enterprise, TIMATE can easily take over its functions so as to avoid card duplication.
SOS – help at your fingertips
TIMATE cards are equipped with the SOS button. An employee who feels unwell or dizzy, e.g. due to high fever, can call for help immediately. If it turns out the employee is ill, the employer can easily identify the persons who have interacted with the employee and should therefore be quarantined.
Remote work support
The card can also be used as a tool to confirm the performance of tasks outside the company premises, e.g. during home office or a business trip. The employee uses the task list on the smartphone and chooses the next tasks to perform. By placing the card against the phone and using the NFC technology, the employee confirms the start and the completion of the task. TIMATE records the time devoted to the task on condition that the employee has the card on. When the card is put against the phone, the work location gets recorded based on the phone’s GPS.
The card enables permanent and quick communication between the employer and the employee, task schedule preview and monitoring, and providing the info about breaks.
The technological and other changes introduced now by the managers of commercial properties will pay off. They will ensure safety and make the real property sector prepared for similar circumstances in the future.