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COVID Office Safety Checklist

Apr 05, 2022
COVID Office Safety Checklist
Going back to the office during COVID can be stressful for workers. A majority of workers continue to express concerns about returning to the office. Many do not want to risk the health of themselves or other family members. Here we have our COVID ...

Going back to the office during COVID can be stressful for workers. A majority of workers continue to express concerns about returning to the office. Many do not want to risk the health of themselves or other family members. Here we have our COVID office safety checklist.

COVID Office Safety Checklist

If your executive team has made the decision to resume in-office work, then it is important to create a purposeful plan that recognizes employee safety. This simple checklist will help you to establish an approach that works for your company.

Send Out an Anonymous Company-Wide Survey

This survey should be incentivized to ensure maximum cooperation. A simple gift-card drawing will do. Use a system that records who submitted surveys but does not tie a specific survey to a specific individual.

Your survey should gather three pieces of information.

How comfortable the employee is with returning to the office
If their family situation (e.g., lack of childcare or the presence of high-risk people) affects their comfort
If hybrid options are of interest to the employee

Re-organize the Work Space

Traditional employee workspaces are far from ideal during a pandemic. Before employees are asked to return to work, you will need to ensure proper spacing between stations.

You may need to move workstations into rest areas and conference rooms to give the appropriate space. If that is not possible, your company will need to consider a hybrid schedule that reduces the total number of employees in the office at one time.

Arrange for Onsite Testing Services

Regular testing provides peace of mind to your employees. By contracting regular COVID-19 testing for a business in Los Angeles, you greatly increase your employees’ willingness to work in a more normal capacity.

Beverly Hills coronavirus test can also help you gauge when it is no longer safe for employees to work from the office.

Have Plans in Place for Reverting to Work-from-Home

The last two years have made it abundantly clear that we likely will continue seeing spikes in viral activity. To show your employees that their safety is a vital part of your plan, you need to have set metrics in place that will determine when it is time to revert to work-from-home.

This plan should be scaled accordingly. For example, in the case of a positive test, all workers sitting within 10 feet of the infected person should be sent home immediately to resume work-from-home.

Basic quarantine precautions ensure widespread office safety, but your company should decide ahead of time what number of positive employee cases warrant a total return to work-from-home.

Provide Basic PPP

If your office is opening for regular work, then masks and hand sanitizer should be readily available to employees throughout the office space. While some employees may not avail themselves of these services, employees who remain concerned will appreciate the gesture.

Consider Incentives

Vaccines are helping to keep the pandemic in check, but that does not mean returning to normal work practices does not come with significant risks. Over the last two years, the American family has changed dramatically.

Children may be in virtual school. Different family units have been forced to pool their resources to survive. Others are still dealing with the effects of long-COVID and helping family members who never fully recovered.

Asking workers to return to the office full-time will make life more complicated for many of your employees, so consider taking steps to help. Even small incentives for in-office workers will show appreciation and support during a difficult time.

Planning for the Long-term

We will have to wait a long time for our lives to truly return to normal. By making a purposeful plan that considers your employees’ safety as well as their changing family dynamics, you are more likely to retain employees and transition into a system that works.