As businesses across the globe are considering how to return to work, it is without a doubt that employees are having mixed emotions about the subject and possibly questioning their employer’s capacity to keep their workspaces safe from the insidious virus as fears of a second wave of the spread rise.
The typical work environment is not exactly the most pandemic proof space as it stands right now. While the shift to safer areas won’t happen at the push of a button, employers must act swiftly to make workplaces safer.
Face masks and hand washing
Businesses ought to provide face masks to their employees, as recommended by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Employers should also urge them to always put them on at their homes and not around the workplaces during commutes, lunch breaks, or shopping.
Putting hand sanitizer containers all through the office to energize the cleaning of hands is another way to mitigate the coronavirus spread. While washing hands with cleanser and water can remove microorganisms from hands, hand sanitizer can help kill and stop spreading the disease.
Working from home
It is going to be helpful for businesses to allow some employees to work remotely from their homes while also enabling them some work-life balance. The absence of work-life balance is a significant cause of burnout. What’s more, telecommuting can make it much harder to accomplish that balance.
The end-of-day routine plays a huge role in setting a mental boundary between the workplace and your personal life. Losing this routine makes it hard to distinguish the two spaces, resulting in faster burnout.
Redesigning of office layouts
For many of us, the open-plan workplace layout is all we have known and come to dislike ever since we started working in white-collar jobs.
From newspaper newsrooms to stockbrokers’ offices, the open office layout has prevailed for many years now, and maybe it is long overdue for a change.
The CDC advises businesses to adjust seats and furniture in offices to maintain social distancing of 6 feet between employees. Employers are also encouraged to adopt methods to physically separate employees in all areas of the facilities. This includes working areas and also meeting rooms, break rooms, parking lots, entrance and exit areas, and locker rooms.
The pandemic presents social difficulties like helping representatives adapt to issues like forlornness during isolate or dread of being exposed to the infection when they come back to the working environment.
The onus is not just on the employer
While it is easy to assume that all the responsibility to ensure a safe working environment falls on the employer, the reality is that safety is an all hands on deck affair.
Continuous cleaning and sterilization of work stations including yet not restricted to machinery, consoles, phones, office gadget, step rails, furniture which the employees are in contact with most times ought to be actualized. Making the administration aware in the event you have shown the disease’s symptoms is also essential in making the workplace safer for everyone.
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