Companies all across the United States are beginning to open their doors after months of lockdowns. With state governments rolling out vaccination programs, there is hope that business will be back to normal after long periods of closure. Despite this optimism, the reality is that COVID-19 is still a menace all across the country. Without proper care, companies risk facing shutdowns and even penalties if they are not careful in managing the pandemic among their employees.
If you are thinking of reopening, here are some of the things that you can do to ensure that you open your business safely during COVID-19.
Workplace Testing
Given the fact that many people who get COVID-19 display few or no symptoms at all, it is critical to use workplace testing for COVID-19 as a tool to manage infections. By carrying out mass or random tests every now and then, infected employees can be quickly identified and isolated. This protects the rest of your employees from getting infected.
The advantage of workplace COVID-19 testing is the fact that you can ensure near 100% compliance. It also means that the results you get will be of a similar standard as well as having a guarantee of rapid results. This is critical if you need to take quick action to isolate infected employees.
Vaccination
With the vaccination program being rolled out, it is important to ensure that all your employees get vaccinated. COVID-19 vaccines significantly reduce the chances of infection and transmission among vaccinated employees. The vaccines also ensure that even if employees get infected, the symptoms are far less serious than what they would be if the employee had not been vaccinated. Ensuring your employees are vaccinated is also a great way to build confidence among your customers that your workplace is a safe environment for them. For example, if you operate a hotel or restaurant, having your employees vaccinated could serve as a great marketing tool.
Workplace Safety
Regardless of whether your employees are vaccinated or not, you will need to take measures to ensure that your workplace is safe. This means ensuring there are enough handwashing stations all across the office space. If your work environment is based outdoors (such as construction sites), you will also need to ensure that your workers have enough handwashing stations that are within their reach. This is important because workers are likely to wash their hands more often if hand washing stations are near them. Social distancing is also critical to managing the spread of the pandemic. For this reason, many workplaces have to re-configure their offices to ensure that employees are not in too close contact with each other. The other factor to consider is how your employees interact with each other. For example, many companies are staggering lunch hours to ensure that their cafeterias are not too crowded. Shift changeovers are also staggered to ensure that changing rooms are not crowded during shift changes.
Another important measure that can be taken to keep the workplace safe is constant employee education on COVID-19 about how to protect themselves and their colleagues from the virus.
