As employees return to your workplace during the coronavirus outbreak, you probably have in place a basic strategy based on CDC guidelines for maintaining worker and customer health. This strategy likely includes such elements as physical distancing, mask wearing, and ventilation filtering. You’re probably also implementing a system of active monitoring to track employee symptoms.
However, for optimal success in reopening, there are six more elements to consider in evaluating your COVID-19 readiness in the workplace.
- Are you able to monitor employees for symptoms before workers leave home? A crucial strategy in keeping the virus away from your workplace is to keep affected employees safely at home. Your strategy should include monitoring your workers’ body temperatures (via thermometer) as well as their recent activities and travels (via questionnaire).
- Will employees with symptoms receive immediate attention from a medical professional? After being instructed to stay home, employees that do not meet the required screening criteria should be connected automatically with a medical professional for further analysis. The professional can determine whether the employee should simply self-isolate or receive additional medical care.
- Do you have a dedicated medical director ready to ensure workplace compliance? You will need an individual—with medical expertise—who can stay up to date on CDC guidelines to ensure that your workplace is observing all health and safety standards.
- Do you have an employee communication strategy in place? It’s essential that you have a detailed messaging plan ready in order to maintain communications that are both direct and compassionate. In order to strengthen employee confidence in a safe working environment, you will need to be clear with employees about coronavirus procedures and policies to observe—and the support you can offer them.
- Do you have telemedicine available to employees? Enabling virtual doctor visits for your workers is critical right now, as many medical offices will not be open for in-person visits. Ideally your telemedicine solution will provide not only video chats but functionality for consistent primary care, medical record sharing, filling of prescriptions, and specialist referrals.
- Does your plan include mental health services? As employees deal with the added stress, uncertainty, and anxiety caused by a return to the workplace, it’s important that you give them a way to manage these challenges. Your solution should provide for hour-long virtual sessions with a behavioral health specialist. Ideally, your employees’ primary-care medical provider can provide mental-health screenings with every visit, to help refer employees in need.
At Eden Health, we can provide or help you with all of these elements; please reach out to us at info@edenhealth.com or visit our COVID-19 solutions page for more information. We hope this checklist provides you with other important steps to consider in maintaining a healthy and productive workforce.
