How one global company is planning to bring its 75,000 employees back into the office after the pandemic subsides - while still keeping remote work as an option

• Government officials and business leaders to begin thinking about how to re-open the US economy.
• But many operating procedures in place before the outbreak are unlikely to return back to normal - at least in the near-term.
• Cisco, for example, is weighing whether to place employees into two "teams" and tier which cohort can be in the office working at a certain time - effectively continuing some of the social distancing guidelines currently in place.
• The tech giant also plans on continuing a halt on business travel, according to Chief Operating Officer Irving Tan.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The sudden pivot to remote work led to a few chaotic weeks as companies scrambled to make the necessary adjustments.

But as corporations begin to settle into the new normal - or at least, for as long as social distancing guidelines remain in place - many are weighing whether to make a permanent shift to allow more employees to work-from-home even post-coronavirus.

Cisco is one of them.

After switching its over 75,000-person global workforce to remote, the tech giant is taking steps to continue to make it possible for employees to continue to do their jobs at home, like making networks stronger to allow more remote access to internal databases.

"How do we make our networks, our connectivity more robust, more resilient. How do we scale up much more effectively," Irving Tan, Cisco chief operating officer, told Business Insider. "There's a lot of learning and it's still somewhat early days."

Cisco provides telecommunications and video conferencing tools. So it's also in the unique position of both planning how its own operations will change as a result of the outbreak, as well as helping other companies adjust their policies.

Tan says clients are now putting a greater emphasis on business continuity planning and rapidly scaling up remote work operations - which means more reliance on platforms like WebEx.

"We are thinking about ... the implications that has for our business and also for our operations going forward," he added.

And as coronavirus cases in some of the most hard-hit areas begin to level off, attention is shifting to how the federal government and corporate America will work to begin reopening parts of the US economy.

But there are many challenges ahead in the quest to return society back to what was considered normal operations, including navigating around procedures or policies that will change forever as a result of the pandemic.

Those that are eager to get employees back into the office, for example, must address the likelihood that more outbreaks are possible even after the current trench of cases subsides.

Cisco is considering implementing new social-distancing guidelines for offices once they open - like putting workers into two buckets and specifying which days each group is allowed to come in.

"It's definitely not going to be a situation where, once we get a sign that things are actually stabilizing or under control, we're just going to [let] everybody go back to doing what you used to do," Tan said. "It's going to be a much more measured process."

Among the new operating procedures under consideration at the 35-year-old firm are creating two "teams" of employees and letting each cohort work in the office for half of the week. Cisco is also likely to continue to put travel restrictions in place to help mitigate any new cases of the coronavirus.

"Until we see things clear, we then will over time scale back to the level of travel and [pace of] people coming through the office that we used to," said Tan.