It's Wednesday a I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your daily coronavirus update. We're making our way to getting back to work, but one big hurdle is the commute. For many that rely on public transportation, this still poses a big problem for companies and employees. Wary of being in close contact with many people, Some companies are considering alternatives to mass transit, like private bus shuttles or smaller office space closer to
where many workers live. Chip Cutter, reporter for the Wall Street Journal, joins us for the commute back to work. Thanks for joining us, Chip, thanks for having me. We're all in this conversation now about getting back to work, reopening economies. There's already some states that have done it. Some of the larger states, let's say, like New York was kind of this epicenter of coronavirus COVID nineteen in the country, still have yet to formulate those plans. You know,
the road back is a lot harder for them. But one of those biggest hurdles to bringing people back to work might be the commute. How do people get to work, especially in these big cities, that have these kind of density problems where everybody is packed in so tight. A lot of people rely on public transportation, and a lot of people are going to be very fearful for getting in a packed subway car or a pack train car, whatever the case may be, because people could be sick.
A lot of people probably maybe not want to wear their face mask things like that. So that's a big problem that companies are facing, and they're formulating plans on how to get around this. So let us know a
little bit more about this chip. That's exactly right. You think of the biggest financial capitals in the world, places like New York and London and Tokyo, all very much dependent on public transit, and companies are realizing that they can make lots of plans to sanitize workstations, to distance
people properly in the office. What they have no control over, though, is how people get to the office that commute itself, and so that's proving to be incredibly problematic, and companies are having to think through, really, what do we do from the moment that our employees leave their front doors to try to get to work. How do we think through some possible solutions here Obviously, some of these are bigger companies because they have the capital and resources for
these things. But some companies are thinking that things such as company car allowances, private bus services and shuttles, or even if they have to leasing smaller office space in locations closer to where some workers live. All of those are on the table now. I talked with one organization that was kind of ahead of this, and that's New York Presbyterian Hospital, a large private health care system in New York. What New York Presbyterian did was start about
thirty bus routes. They looked, they did a zip code analysis to see where their workers were based in the New York region, and then set up all these private coach bus routes and so only about the capacity was used so they could space people apart. They had a cleaner who boarded the bus after every trip. That gave them the ability to get these essential medical workers to the hospital without them having to go on trains or
public buses. And so I think we might see more solutions like that, more companies looking to people like Google and Facebook, companies that have done this for a long time now. So all of these are on the table. You also see some companies thinking about bringing the company
car back. Others are offering mopet sharing services or bike sharing services at a discount for employees, trying to find ways to get people to the office if they don't feel comfortable getting on public transit, and even the flip side something that we're doing right now working from home, Some are willing to embrace just doing that a lot longer, just to avoid having either the expense of this or just the overall worry for their employees to get sick.
They might just say, hey, let's just keep this work at home thing going. You know. I know there's a lot of companies that realize how well they could do this, mostly at a necessity, but it has been pretty successful in a lot of different companies. I've been talking to HR executives at all sorts of different companies over the past couple of weeks, and they all say, this idea that we can somehow restrict people from working remotely is really over now. Our employees have proven that they're able
to do it. So it's gonna be tough for companies to really say you can't do your work at home. That said, a lot of companies do eventually want to get people back to offices. Still, they see value in the camaraderie and the ideas that are generated by having folks in the same place. And there are also very real issues that we're all facing at home, whether that
child care issues or just a lack of space. Working from home isn't always that easy, So I think companies do want to offer that choice to people, even if only initially say of an office might come back. You know, the commute obviously is one of the very first things. How do you even get to work? Once we get back inside the workplace, Companies are also thinking about that. How do you manage the flow? One of the things you noted in your article one way hallways could be
a thing. That's right. Companies are looking at the floor plans of their spaces and saying, Okay, this halloway needs to be this direction, this stairwell should only go up or down, very similar to what we've seen in grocery stores across the country. And so some of those approaches
that I think will make their way into offices. But this is really a challenge for a number of HR executives or for companies trying to figure out how how do we do this safely, How do we bring people back to the office putting in all of these changes that will make it possible to do work while also still keeping people far enough apart from each other. Yeah, it's constantly been a very interesting thing looking forward. And
you know, we look at places like Japan. Culturally they wear the masks all the time, the face mask, and it just really seems like this is going to be a change that everybody's going to have to make. Right now in our company here, they're already telling us we have to wear face masks, and nobody's here. There's a skeleton crew of people here. But once people really come back, that might be a new normal for a lot of companies. I think you're right, And you're already seeing some government
officials across the US call for this. I think about the governor of Ohio and other states have said if you're working in an office, you should be wearing a mask, and I think that is going to become the Norman a lot of companies, many HR executives I spoke with, said that they are looking to those local officials though, to kind of give guidance on what that should be. But I think it is. It's I think it's becoming part of our reality, and I think people are more
and more comfortable with that. A lot of planning, a lot of preparing before all this has to be implemented, but it's kind of our new reality that we got to get through. And as we mentioned these hurdles of getting to work the commute, there is the first big challenge that these big companies need to figure out. Chip Cutter, reporter at the Wall Street Journal, Thank you very much for joining us. Great thanks for having me. I'm Oscar Ramirez,
and this has been your daily coronavirus update. You don't forget that. For today's big news stories, you can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday. So follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcasts.