Guidance for Employees During COVID-19
This pandemic caused by the outbreak of COVID-19 has proven to be an extremely testing time for everyone. So many different areas of everyday life have been affected, with a new way of living requiring adaptation to follow restrictions laid out by our government. One area that has been hugely affected is the working day. In this article, we are going to go through some guidance points for employees working during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Employee Guidance During COVID-19
First of all, it is key to highlight the current government recommendation that if you can, at all, work from home, do work from home. If you’re unable to due to the nature of your job, there are some steps that you can take to help stay safe during the Coronavirus outbreak.
Hygiene is a key concern. Follow the officially backed hand-cleaning routine (that is to wash your hands with soap and water for 20 seconds). Ensure that you are regularly washing your hands with sanitiser as you go about your working day, don’t just wait until you use the bathroom! Also remember to be frequently cleaning and disinfecting objects and surfaces that are touched regularly, if an area is particularly busy, enhance the cleaning procedure even further. Keep drying your hands after washing them with either paper towels or electrical dryers.
We also must consider the social distancing measures that are in place to help stop the spread of the virus. If you can, keep 2m between any other person and avoid sharing workstations. Try to keep a one-way traffic system operating through the workplace where possible. If you have a job where you could switch to only seeing visitors by appointment, that would be a highly recommended option.
If, as an employee, you find it is not possible to keep 2m apart from other members of staff or customers, then you need to do as much as you can to help manage the risk of transmission. Let us look at some things you can consider to help with this. Firstly, decide whether the activity in question is essential to carry out at that moment or can it be put off? Can the business still operate without it going ahead?
If you do have to continue with the operation try and keep the activity time of it as short as you can. Where people are going to be nearby it will be a good idea to use screens or some other form of barrier to separate each other. It could also be a smart measure to have workers working back-to-back or side-to-side where possible.
Hopefully, your management will be a staggering shift and break times to reduce interaction risks, so make sure to follow these schedules. Another tip for employees is if you must work with another member of staff, keep to the same one, therefore reducing the risk of the interaction of several extra people.
These are very difficult times for employees. Unfortunately, until some form of normality allows for work to continue as they did pre-pandemic, the best that can be done is to adapt to our new job life and help keep ourselves and others as safe as we can.
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