19 Feb 2020

After working from home for weeks on end, some of us might be more excited to get back to the office than on your average Monday morning. However, with recent events and the need to maintain social distancing in the office going forward, some of us may also be a little apprehensive.

When it’s declared safe to return to offices, there needs to be careful management so staff can adhere to social distancing to reduce any risk of infection. Meeting rooms are likely to be one of the busiest areas, with groups of people gathering to discuss what we’ve all been up to over the past couple of months. But this creates the big question of, how can we stay COVID compliant?

## Social distancing in the office

Of course, we all need to ‘Stay Alert’ and use our common sense. We can implement one-way corridors, put up screens between desks and provide hand sanitiser at entrances to the building. But what about when you have an important meeting or it’s time for your weekly team catch up? We can be more aware of our surroundings, sit further apart and avoid sharing devices. But what about the actual use and booking of meeting rooms?

Reasons for implementing new technology and software packages usually have efficiency at their core. That’s one of the reasons why Clearooms was created, to ensure office space and limited meeting rooms are used efficiently. Clearooms has its benefits, but it traditionally works with a shared tablet device which for some may cause alarm. We want to make our users aware that this does not have to be the case.

So, how can Clearooms help?

From your own desktop or tablet, you can access the Clearooms portal and easily change the app to Display Only Mode. This means you can continue to book your meetings as normal, but no interaction is necessary, meaning no touching shared tablet devices.

To do this, follow these simple steps:

• Log in to the portal
• Got to Settings
• Under Account, click App Settings
• Switch the toggle for Display Only Mode to ON

Once set to ON, Display Only Mode will allow Clearooms to purely be used to display meeting room availability. Other ways in which Clearooms can be used to help towards social distancing in the office include:

Knowing when meeting rooms are free – there’s no need to touch the door handle to open the door and check

Booking a meeting room for the day for reassurance of your own working space and let everyone know it’s busy

Adding a note to display with your meetings such as to use hand sanitiser before entering the room

Uploading an image to reinforce your message

When social distancing isn’t feasible, set smaller meeting rooms to Busy to prevent groups from using them or to show when a meeting room requires cleaning

There are a range of measures which we can all follow to help keep our workplaces safe and COVID compliant. Small changes as mentioned and how you use your meeting room booking app can help towards increasing the confidence of your staff that they have a safe working environment to return to. For more information, take a look at our Covid page.