It can be quite an endeavour to plan how you and your employees are going to return to work in a safe and efficient manner, especially with anxieties of uncertainty running high. Here’s a few points that may help this transition:
Make the Workplace Safe
- Deep clean the office before employees return
- Increase daily cleaning
- Have daily cleaning standards of desks and common spaces
- In a shared office determine cleaning responsibilities with your landlord and other building tenants
- Have and share risk mitigation strategies for employees commuting by public transit, carpooling or ride sharing. Also share the risk mitigation strategies for social distancing in common areas.
- Communicate rules for shared kitchen use to all employees and post them in the kitchen area
Encourage Good Hygiene
- Order hygiene products to have on-hand (e.g. hand sanitizer, paper towels, hand soap, disinfectant wipes, tissues, masks)
- Lead by example
- Hang posters in common spaces on the best practices in regards to health and hygiene, for example; handwashing practices, not coming into work if sick and coughing and sneezing.
- Face masks? If so, decide who will supply and replace or launder them. How will you enforce correct use?
Update Policies and Procedures
- Look at the office layout, does it allow your staff to practice social distancing. You can install sneeze guards between spaces if you cannot maintain enough space between desks.
- Limit the number of employees in meeting rooms and encourage video conference meetings.
- Update visitor policies: are delivery people, clients or employee family and friends allowed in the workplace? Is there a way to make deliveries contactless? These are good questions to ask yourself.
Support Employees' Restore Productivity Mental Health
- Be aware of mental health issues that can arise from periods of isolation and anxieties that may arise from staff returning to work.
- Share resources for employees who are struggling with their mental health
- Offer mental health leave
Restore Productivity
- Get employees back to their routines with as little interruption as possible
- Take inventory of devices and equipment coming back into the office and remember to disinfect everything that returns.
Encourage Social Interaction
- Will you bring employees back in stages and/or on rotating shifts
- Allow employees work time to socialise and reconnect whilst remaining socially distant
Resources:
COVID-19 advice for Public from World Health Organisation
5 Tips for Safely Reopening Your Office from Harvard Business Review
Related Articles:
DISINFECTING YOUR HOME IF SOMEONE IS SICK
5 QUICK CLEANING TIPS THAT CAN BOOST PRODUCTIVITY AT WORK
HYGIENE IN THE WORKPLACE
Any other tips you can think of that might help businesses create the best and safest return to work plan? We are all in this together.