A lot of small office spaces, such as medical clinics, have very small waiting rooms. Clinics that specialize in one type of medicine, or other types of businesses that don’t typically have a huge flow of clients throughout the day, don’t usually need much waiting space. However, with the need for social distancing, space has recently become a lot more valuable. As the weather begins to warm up, outdoor waiting areas may be exactly what we need to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Allow Social Distancing
If you have a small waiting room – one that only has 5-10 chairs – trying to seat even 3 waiting guests with 6 feet between them is a challenge. In order to allow social distancing in your waiting areas, bring them outside. There’s likely to be more space outdoors than in your cramped little waiting room. If your office is part of a business strip, you probably have a shared parking lot with enough space for a waiting area.
Setting up an outdoor tent will provide a lot more room for spaced out seating. The tent will provide cover from rain, sun, and wind. You can even cooperate with neighboring businesses to create a shared waiting area. This could prove to be more economical for everyone as well as prevent irritations about using up parking lot space.
Encourage Air Flow
Because of its outdoor nature, having an outdoor waiting area under tent cover is great for encouraging air flow. Because COVID-19 is spread through the air, indoor waiting areas can be high spread zones. They get a lot of different people throughout the day, stopping there to breathe and then moving on. If even one of your clients has COVID-19, this puts every visitor after them at risk of infection.
Outdoor waiting areas with even one tent flap left open will consistently get air flow throughout the day. Any contaminated air will be blown away and replaced with fresh. This makes an outdoor waiting area much better at preventing the spread of COVID-19.
Encourage Low Indoor Traffic
With your waiting area outdoors, clients can be brought in one or two at a time, as their appointment or meeting time arrives. By lowering the amount of traffic in your building at one time, and lowering the duration of indoor presence, you create a safer office. There’s less time for the office air to become contaminated and less exposure time for healthy visitors.
Protect Employees
Employees working with clients and the public at the current time are high risk for contracting COVID-19. Every day that your employees come to work, they risk catching COVID-19 from visiting clients and patients. Repay them with improved safety and by reducing their exposure to visitors as much as possible. When you switch to outdoor waiting areas, employees are immediately in a safer work environment.
Contact us at Varsity Tents if you want to make the jump to outdoor waiting areas. We offer tents of all sizes, meaning options for waiting areas of any size you require.