As an employer, you must protect people from harm. This includes taking reasonable steps to protect your workers and others from coronavirus. As you already know, coronavirus can transfer from people to surfaces. It can be passed on to others who touch the same surfaces. Keeping your workplace clean reduces the potential for coronavirus to spread. It is a critical part of making and keeping your business ‘COVID-secure’.
While it certainly feels like we’re slowly returning back to “normal”, it’s still vital that you ensure that your workplace is safe! Here are some ways you can organise your work and workplace, so hygiene is maintained, surfaces are clean and people are provided with the right facilities to control the risk from the coronavirus.
Limit Surfaces That Employees Need To Touch With Their Hands:
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Doors don’t need handles and can swing open both ways by just pushing them with your foot or shoulder.
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Install Motion lights in all rooms, including bathrooms. Doing this is also environmentally friendly.
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Add motion sensors to all bathroom features. Most new offices already have this, but double down. One should not have to touch a faucet to wash their hands.
Embrace Technology
Design office space that embraces collaboration technology and remote work.
If you create pilot programs that help employees become efficient at working from home. This way they will be better equipped to work from home on days they are feeling sick. Or when they are afraid of catching a pathogen. Your workspace should maximize video conferencing. This includes thinking through office space design to add phone booths or small conference rooms over individual offices. This way people can connect better with those working from home. If employees are going to work from home more often then offices can double down on shared areas with rotating desks for those who work from home some days of the week who don’t need designated desks at your office.
Invest in personal laptops, and phones for your employees,
so they aren’t sharing hardware. Employees can commute with their devices. Giving employees their own devices will limit the number of wires and desk objects so cleaning crews can keep your office space clean and healthy.
Invest in bluetooth technology in your conference rooms.
Employees should be able to use their cell phones to connect to a conference call without having to touch the speaker or a shared phone. We all already do this to listen to music; we can do the same for conference calls!
Choose Easy Furnishing To Clean, If you are a new parent you know the importance of only investing in-home furniture that is easy to clean. This should be the same for your office space. In many offices, building or third party cleaning crews come in at the end of the day to clean. Therefore, anything you can do to make their job more efficient will benefit your employee’s health.
Clean Office Space, Many offices may want to skimp out of daily cleaning. You shouldn’t. Environmentally friendly cleaning crews must come in to disinfect anything that might be contaminated. A designated person in your office should go over what products cleaning crews are using. Additionally, you will want to make sure they are correctly cleaning things like the refrigerator and copy machines.
Keep Installing Sanitizer in every conference room, shared spaces, and reception area. This will NEVER go out of style. Even if no one uses it, you are singling to all visitors that you expect your office to be clean and healthy so employees and their visitors can thrive.
Update Your Refrigerator, In many offices, it is already a cesspool of who knows what. However, there has been technological advancement in refrigerators. For instance, you can now install refrigerator drawers. Each department can have its draw. However, that isn’t an option for everyone. Another option could be to have more than one fridge. One refrigerator for employees food the other used for your guests. Handles need to be disinfected regularly. You can install some hand sanitiser next to the refrigerator door.
You Can Never Have Enough Disinfect Wipes. Gift each of your employees a tube for them to keep at their desk. If that is too much. keep a bunch of them in a common area that they have easy access to.
Trick Out Your First Aid Kit, Did you know that zinc lozenges are proven to be effective in blocking Coronavirus from multiplying in your throat and nasopharynx? Additionally, Latex gloves and surgical masks can come in handy if your employees are worried. Stock up on all over the counter first aid, so your employees feel you have their best interest at heart.
It is vital to not just think about Coronavirus but also about future pathogens and the health of your prospective employees. We must rethink how we work and how we design our workspace to ensure we all stay healthy, efficient, and useful
