Your employees’ safety is paramount, and never has it been more important than it is right now to make sure you protect them from harm in the workplace. Alongside the usual risks specific to your industry, we are now all doing everything we can to reduce the spread of covid-19 and to keep everyone safe.
Encourage social distancing
If you are in an organisation that still needs staff to work in-person, it can be easy to get a little complacent and forget the normal social distancing rules that are in place everywhere else. To help keep everyone a little safer, why not consider getting some reusable branded face snoods. These are really comfortable so your employees might find them a little easier to wear than traditional face masks. The branding adds a special touch and will make your staff feel like part of a team.
Allow high-risk staff to work from home.
You may need some of your staff to be in the office/warehouse; however, for some members of your team, this is going to have extra risks. For example, if they have underlying health conditions or are heavily pregnant. You might want to discuss with these employees how you can best support them. It might be that they need to work from home for a while, and you need to find some tasks that they can do remotely.
This also goes for anyone showing any symptoms. If they have a new continuous cough, temperature, or a change to their smell or taste, they should isolate until they get a negative test result. Make sure your staff know that they will not be penalised for staying at home if they have any symptoms, and in fact, it is insisted upon. It might feel like lots of little absences across the workforce, but it will be a lot less impactful than if the entire workplace experienced an active outbreak and had to be off sick as a consequence. It’s a small inconvenience for the good of the entire company, and especially the staff.
Keep it clean
No matter how clean things were before, they need to be a whole lot cleaner now. This means cleaning the hotspots during the day, such as keyboards, door handles, and the kettle, as well as investing in some deep cleaning services regularly. Of course, this also means your employees need to be aware of their own cleaning habits. Set up a sanitation station with wipes, sprays, etc., and encourage staff to clean their own desk before and after use.
There are unprecedented times, and we are all just doing our best, but by keeping an open dialogue with your staff and accepting feedback on measures, you will hopefully keep everyone safe and happy and your work ticking on. You may find you have to be a little more patient than usual, and your workers need to be patient, but it’s not forever, and it’s worth it to save lives.