Now that infections and hospitalizations from COVID-19 have fluctuated and many workers who returned to work have had to go back to remote life, some pandemic-era changes aren’t going away soon.
The number of COVID infections and hospitalizations have dropped recently in Arizona and nationwide, but companies have seen cases where employees have returned to their desks, only to be sent back home by a new variant.
“It’s been challenging — really, the challenge has been in just navigating what is best for the team, what is best for our clients,” Mackenzie Collier, founder of Mackenzie Collier Interiors in downtown Phoenix, told KJZZ. “We were really kind of having to do a lot of back-and-forth with clients just to get the information to even start the project.”
Collier said her employees started working from home in March 2020, but working on interior design without being able to see the space you’re going to design in person creates a special challenge.
“Sometimes, we drive out to a project and it’s in a beautiful setting and that inspires the design, so we were kind of just divorced from all of that for over a year,” she said.
Though many of their clients understood their alertness, some did not, saying the designers were being overly cautious. As a result, Collier’s team voted to go back into clients’ houses in July 2021. They take rapid COVID tests before they go to work and they wear masks while they’re in a client's home.
Lynda Zugec, a management consultant, understands the challenges companies face, and said the last two years have not been easy for companies or employees. That has led to the need to rethink staffing strategies.
“Businesses have understandably, of course, become very tired and wary,” she said to KJZZ. “And they thought that some sort of normalcy would return, and this has happened sort of again and again where we see, ‘Are we returning? Are we not returning?’ So they’ve had to rethink about how they’re going to move forward.”
To Zugec, businesses fit into one of three categories. For some, their workers can easily work from home. Then there are essential services, where the employees physically have to be at work. And some companies can take appropriate steps to provide safety in the office or use automation for some tasks. But, as companies have tried to adapt to the ever-changing issues caused by the pandemic, it creates uncertainty for them and their customers.
“These businesses have largely tried to adhere to public health guidance and to uphold the safety requirements,” she said. “But again, this has been a whirlwind for them, and it will continue to be so in the near term.”
Zugec believes the so-called hybrid model of work is going to become increasingly more popular, but for those who have to be in an office or business space, requiring things like masks or vaccinations could create legal troubles.
Jill Chasson, an employment attorney with Coppersmith Brockelman in Phoenix, said to KJZZ that a company can require a mask and legally can ask about vaccinations. But, Zugec said, there’s no consensus on the best solution.
“We don’t have any data necessarily on what works best, or what the best path forward would be, but I think employers are exploring those different avenues more fully now that this is been ongoing," she said. "Because, of course, people do miss the water cooler chats, the in-person interaction and such.”