The seriousness of the current situation with Covid 19 should not be underestimated. Because of the time in between when someone is infected and when they start showing symptoms, we're going to be constantly behind the curve if we wait for things to "look bad" before we start responding.
Safewest has clients in a variety of industries here in San Diego, including first responders, hospitals, health clinics, and life sciences. There are a tremendous amount of resources being directed toward controlling this pandemic, but those resources can easily be overwhelmed if too many people get sick.
Now is a critical time for anyone with safety responsibilities to step up and lead.
Make sure you have a written plan for a response at different stages of this pandemic, and communicate with your employees. If you provide services at client locations, make sure you have a well-defined plan you can share with them on what safety measures you are taking to keep everyone safe. If the people you serve come to you, make sure you're got rigorous screening protocols in place, but also understand that most of the screening protocols (self reported history of travel/contact with infected, temperature taking) have serious limitations, so don't get a false sense of security.
These are five observations I've made over the past few weeks that employers in all critical industries need to consider:
1. Make sure your employees understand social distancing isn't all or nothing. Just because they have to be close together sometimes to repair equipment, care for patients, build things, etc doesn't mean we shouldn't try as hard as possible to maintain social distance during all other times. We're striving for maximizing the percentage of time we can spend at a safe distance, rather than treating this as something we can either do all the time, or don't bother with.
2. Be aggressive about reminding and then enforcing employee requirements for hand-washing, staying home when sick, and general healthy work practices. It should be very clear to everyone that these behaviors are not optional, but a condition of their employment just like any other essential safety practice. This is also a golden opportunity to finally put some emphasis behind something we should be doing even when there's not a pandemic.
3. Don't trust that your vendors are doing what they say they are in terms of Covid 19 safety. In assessing vendors at client sites, we have observed some troubling discrepancies between what companies SAY they are doing to keep their clients safe, and what they are actually doing. Don't be shy about asking what their plan is, and verifying.
4. If your company utilizes contingent ("temp") workers, realize that many staffing agencies don't provide a lot of resources or support. There are definitely better agencies and worse ones; many seem to go of their way to avoid informing employees that by law in California they have to be provided sick leave days. This leaves contingent workers in a position where they have to choose between going to work when they might be getting sick, or paying the bills. It takes time to get unemployment or disability; sick leave makes it easier to make the right choice to stay home.
5. Especially for field service, construction and healthcare...don't take contamination home. Covid 19 aside, work clothes can end up with a lot of chemical and biological contaminants on them, but especially now, workers should be extra careful. Work shoes should stay at work, or get removed outside. For those who wear work clothes home, they should create an area near the entry door with a hamper where outer clothing can be removed. Work clothes should be laundered by themselves. If a work vehicle is also a personal vehicle, think about towel seatcovers that can be washed, and wiping down steering wheel, shifter, radio controls, and high contact surfaces after the workday.
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