The End of the Open Plan Office? Workspaces Get Post-Pandemic Makeovers

An empty office space is seen during the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) disease in Washington, US, April 29, 2020. (Reuters)
An empty office space is seen during the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) disease in Washington, US, April 29, 2020. (Reuters)
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The End of the Open Plan Office? Workspaces Get Post-Pandemic Makeovers

An empty office space is seen during the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) disease in Washington, US, April 29, 2020. (Reuters)
An empty office space is seen during the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) disease in Washington, US, April 29, 2020. (Reuters)

One-way corridors, buffer zones around desks, and clear plastic screens to guard against colleagues’ coughs and sneezes may become office standards after coronavirus stay-at-home orders are lifted, say occupational experts.

Government-mandated lockdown orders to contain the global pandemic have radically changed how and where people work, with millions switching from office to the dining room and meetings moving to videoconference, reported Reuters.

As curbs are eased, offices are being redesigned to minimize transmission risk and prevent a second wave of coronavirus cases, which the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned could hit the United States hard next winter.

International real estate company Cushman & Wakefield, which has overseen the return of almost a million people to offices in China, has come up with a workplace design concept to help usher in the new iteration of office life.

The concept uses the “six feet rule” of social distancing to keep areas around desks empty. A prototype in the company’s Amsterdam offices shows clients how their spaces can be configured.

“It comes down to some basic concepts, things like colored carpet or, in a less sophisticated or expensive application, taping off what six-feet workstations look like,” said Bill Knightly, who works on the company’s COVID-19 task force.

“So it’s very visual. In some cases, installing Plexiglas or some other form of sneeze or cough guards to give folks additional insurance.”

For workers used to the social interactions in modern open-plan offices and hot desks shared by multiple employees, the changes could be hard to adapt to, said organizational psychologist Brad Bell, who has studied the impact of working remotely.

“We’ve found that the more isolation that employees experience or perceive, that has a negative impact on a number of important outcomes... their satisfaction with their work,” said Bell, a professor of Human Resource Studies at Cornell University. “I think it can certainly lead to stress. It can undermine wellbeing.”

Employers are seeing the benefits of remote work during the pandemic, Bell said, predicting some might move toward that model permanently.

“What my conversations with companies are revealing is employees are remaining productive. They’re getting the work done. And in many ways, you know, it’s a difficult time for everybody, but are performing much better than many companies thought they would be,” he said.

But there could also be greater demand for office space to allow for social distancing, Knightly said.

“Do we think everybody who can work from home will continue to work from home? No, not at this stage. That’s not the general consensus,” he said.

US deaths from the coronavirus are nearing 70,000, according to a Reuters tally. Stay-at-home measures have battered the US economy and demonstrations to demand an end to the orders have flared across the country.



Numbers That Matter from the First 100 Days of Trump’s Second Term

US President Donald Trump looks on, on the day he welcomes the Super Bowl LIX winner, NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 28, 2025. (Reuters)
US President Donald Trump looks on, on the day he welcomes the Super Bowl LIX winner, NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 28, 2025. (Reuters)
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Numbers That Matter from the First 100 Days of Trump’s Second Term

US President Donald Trump looks on, on the day he welcomes the Super Bowl LIX winner, NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 28, 2025. (Reuters)
US President Donald Trump looks on, on the day he welcomes the Super Bowl LIX winner, NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 28, 2025. (Reuters)

President Donald Trump's first 100 days back in the White House have been a demolition job — and that's a point of pride for his administration.

For the Republican administration, the raw numbers on executive actions, deportations, reductions in the federal workforce, increased tariff rates and other issues point toward a renewed America. To Trump's critics, though, he's wielding his authority in ways that challenge the Constitution's separation of powers and pose the risk of triggering a recession.

From executive orders to deportations, some defining numbers from Trump’s first 100 days:

Roughly 140 executive orders In just 100 days, Trump has nearly matched the number of executive orders that his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, signed during the previous four years, 162. Trump, at roughly 140, is essentially moving at a pace not seen since Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency, when the Great Depression necessitated urgent action.

But the number alone fails to capture the unprecedented scope of Trump's actions. Without seeking congressional approval, Trump has used his orders and directives to impose hundreds of billions of dollars annually in new import taxes and reshape the federal bureaucracy by enabling mass layoffs.

John Woolley, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and co-director of the American Presidency Project, sees "very aggressive assertions of presidential authority in all kinds of ways" that are far more audacious than anything done by former presidents. That includes Biden's student debt forgiveness program and Barack Obama's decision to allow residency for immigrants who arrived in the country illegally as children.

"None of those had the kind of arbitrary, forceful quality of Trump’s actions," Woolley said.

145% tariff rate on China Trump's tariff agenda has unnerved the global economy. He's gone after the two biggest US trade partners, Mexico and Canada, with tariffs of as much as 25% for fentanyl trafficking. He's put import taxes on autos, steel and aluminum. On his April 2 "Liberation Day," he slapped tariffs on dozens of countries that were so high that the financial markets panicked, causing him to pull back and set a 10% baseline tax on imports instead to allow 90 days of negotiations on trade deals.

But that pales in comparison to the 145% tariff he placed on China, which prompted China to fight back with a 125% tax on US goods. There are exemptions to the US tariffs for electronics. But inflationary pressures and recession fears are both rising as a trade war between the world's two largest economies could spiral out of control in dangerous ways.

The US president has said that China has been talking with his administration, but he's kept his description of the conversations vague. The Chinese government says no trade negotiations of any kind are underway. Trump is banking on the tariffs raising enough revenue for him to cut taxes, even as he simultaneously talks up the prospect of an agreement.

So far, despite the economic risks, the Trump team shows little desire to budge, even as the president claims a deal with China will eventually happen.

"I believe that it’s up to China to de-escalate because they sell five times more to us than we sell to them," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC on Monday.

More than 10,000 square miles of Crimea Trump said during his presidential campaign that he could quickly defuse the Russian-started war in Ukraine. But European allies and others say the US president's statements about how to end the war reflect a troubling affinity for Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Trump's peace proposal says that Ukraine must recognize Russian authority over the more than 10,000 square miles (26,000 square kilometers) of the Crimean Peninsula. Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy rejected the idea out of hand: "There is nothing to talk about — it is our land, the land of the Ukrainian people."

Russia annexed the area in 2014 when Obama was president, and Trump says he's simply being realistic about its future.

The four meetings that Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, has had with Putin have yet to produce a trustworthy framework for the deal that Trump wants to deliver.

After recent Russian missile attacks on Ukrainian cities and towns, Trump posted on social media that perhaps Putin "doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along."

Over 2,000 more Palestinians in Gaza dead Trump was eager to take credit for an "epic ceasefire" agreement in the Israel-Hamas war in order to restart the release of hostages taken in Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack. But the ceasefire ended in March, and more than 2,000 Palestinians have died since the temporary truce collapsed. Palestinian officials have put the total number of deaths above 52,200. Food, fuel and medicine have not entered the Gaza Strip for almost 60 days.

Trump said in February that he would remove the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and relocate them elsewhere, suggesting that the United States could take over the area, level the destroyed buildings and construct a luxurious "Riviera of the Middle East."

Roughly 280,000 federal job losses The Department of Government Efficiency, led by tech billionaire and adviser Elon Musk, is dramatically shrinking the government workforce. Across all agencies, there have been about 60,000 firings, including at the IRS, which might make it harder to collect taxes and reduce the budget deficit. Another 75,000 federal workers accepted administration buyout offers. And the Trump administration has floated at least another 145,000 job cuts.

Those estimated job losses don't include the possible layoffs and hiring freezes at nonprofits, government contractors and universities that had their federal funding frozen by the Trump administration.

The federal government had about 3 million federal employees, including at the US Postal Service, when Trump became president, according to the Labor Department.

139,000 deportations The Trump administration says it has deported 139,000 people who were in the United States without proper legal authority. Trump’s first months also have produced a sharp drop in crossings at the Southwest border, with Border Patrol tracking 7,181 encounters in March, down from 137,473 the same month last year.

Deportations have occasionally lagged behind Biden’s numbers, but Trump officials reject the comparison as not "apples to apples" because fewer people are crossing the border now.

The administration maintains that it's getting rid of violent and dangerous criminals. But many migrants who assert their innocence have been deported without due process.

In April, the Supreme Court directed the Trump administration to "facilitate" the return to the US of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an El Salvador citizen who was deported to his home country. Abrego Garcia had been living in Maryland and had an immigration court order preventing his deportation to his native country over fears he would face persecution from local gangs. So far, Abrego Garcia remains held in a Salvadoran prison.

Trump said last week that he won the presidential election on the promise of deportations and that the courts are interfering with his efforts.

"We’re getting them out, and a judge can say, ‘No, you have to have a trial,’" Trump said. "The trial's going to take two years, and now we’re going to have a very dangerous country if we’re not allowed to do what we’re entitled to do."