How to Protect Essential Employees From COVID-19

While so many are home sheltering in place as the coronavirus spreads throughout the US, essential workers, including grocery store clerks, pharmacists, delivery workers, medical personnel, and more, face certain challenges. For one, they are more at risk of infection as they contact people. To lower your employees’ risk as much as possible, consider

Get Updates on Their Condition

While physical contact is to be avoided during the pandemic, communicating with your staff is crucial. While you should be mindful about overloading your workers with information when they’re already stressed, communicating is a good thing. This allows you to gather information on their points of contact and their overall health. Should workers begin to show symptoms such as a fever, dry cough, and shortness of breath, you can more quickly send them to self-isolate away from other workers and prevent sickness from spreading.

Encourage Your Workers

Another reason to keep in contact is to provide your staff consistent support. They have to continue doing their job while worrying about their health and the well-being of their family. Your words of encouragement could help keep them emotionally afloat as they struggle against worry.

Educate Workers on Sanitation Protocols

Sanitation is key during a pandemic. Establish sanitation protocols that include frequent hand-washing, not touching their faces, repeated cleaning, and more. Communicate these simply to staff and make sure no one takes shortcuts. While this will slow down your operation, it’s imperative to kill the virus before it infects your workers. Sanitation is very effective when done properly—soap and hot water destroy the virus’s outer fat layer.

Institute Physical Distancing-Friendly Policies

Another way to protect essential employees from COVID-19 is to strive for as much physical distance as possible. For example, you could implement two-way radios—as long as you followed certain tips for clear radio communication, this would limit your person-to-person contact without compromising time. Furthermore, you could consider rotating staff so fewer people work at once and encouraging staff to stay at least six feet apart. These strategies will allow them to do their job with a bit more peace of mind.