News You Can Use: 5/6/2020

In the weeks since social distancing lockdowns abruptly scattered the American workforce, businesses across the country have scrambled to find ways to keep their employees in line, packing their social calendars and tracking their productivity to ensure they’re telling the truth about working from home.

Thousands of companies now use monitoring software to record employees’ Web browsing and active work hours, dispatching the kinds of tools built for corporate offices into workers’ phones, computers and homes. But they have also sought to watch over the workers themselves, mandating always-on webcam rules, scheduling thrice-daily check-ins and inundating workers with not-so-optional company happy hours, game nights and lunchtime chats.

Company leaders say the systems are built to boost productivity and make the quiet isolation of remote work more chipper, connected and fun. But some workers said all of this new corporate surveillance has further blurred the lines between their work and personal lives, amping up their stress and exhaustion at a time when few feel they have the standing to push back.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/30/work-from-home-surveillance/

Nursing homes have long been seen as grim and sterile, but during the COVID-19 pandemic, they’ve also been fatal—1.3 million individuals living in nursing homes around the world have died from the virus. While elderly people and those with preexisting conditions are high-risk populations, the infection’s rapid rate of spread is also due to the way nursing homes are designed. Most rooms have two or four beds that are placed in close proximity; sinks and windows can be hard to access; and dated systems require surfaces to be frequently touched. In the face of coronavirus, it’s time to rethink how nursing homes are designed.

Also…

Reducing these clusters to 12 people maximum, each with their own room, would help limit virus transmission while allowing for more targeted and intimate care. “Within that cluster, they have their rooms but [there’s a] living room, dining room, [and a] nurse station [with] administrative support,” according to Bryan Langlands, a principal at NBBJ who focuses on the design of healthcare spaces. “The easiest way to help mitigate prevention and spread of COVID-19 is certainly to no longer build any double-bedded, semi-private rooms.”

https://www.fastcompany.com/90484506/nursing-home-design-is-deadly-heres-how-to-change-it