Returning to the New Normal is the goal, but how to accomplish that?
In some parts of the U.S. offices are starting to re-open. Occupancy limits have eased, local and state governments have a better understanding of the risks involved and in many states, the Covid-19 infection rates have stabilized or declined. But that doesn’t mean you can return to business as usual when the time comes for your employees to return to work.
“First you have to have a plan,” said Robert Teachout, SHRM-SCP, legal editor of XpertHR, “because otherwise you’re going to miss something.”
Teachout said that the process of returning your employees to work can be complex. “It will take at least as much effort as it did to move them out.”
“You’ll need a multi-disciplinary team to make things work,” Teachout said. Team members should include representatives from IT, facilities, HR, finance and other groups to make sure that there are no holes.
Facilities
Disinfection of office to prevent COVID-19
For example, the facilities staff will be necessary to reconfigure the office. They will determine the proper location for desks and other work areas, and they will be responsible for making sure the HVAC system provides enough airflow and filtration to meet post-Covid work area requirements. The facilities team will also repurpose break rooms and conference rooms into work areas.
Part of the facilities work will involve the IT and security staff. IT will need to relocate workstation and telephone connections and make permanent provisions for employees who will continue to work at home. This may include implementing an office reservation system for temporary work areas so that workers reporting for only a few days at a time are assured of having an appropriate place to work.
The security team may need to implement entry stations for checking for elevated body temperature along with entry monitoring to ensure that only the proper number of employees are in the building at any one time.
While this is going on, Teachout said that those teams will need to work with HR to develop appropriate policies for the return to work. Those may include what type of employee screening you plan to use, how many people will be allowed in the office at any one time, and which people those will be. He said that you will need to decide whether you plan to stagger arrival and departure times or work in shifts.
If you plan to use an app for self-reporting of Covid-19 symptoms, you’ll need to develop a policy for deciding which symptoms you’re going to ask about and how many you consider to be significant.
Security
Temperature screening may take place before employees enter the workplace.
Regardless of the screening method, your HR team will need to work with your security team to determine how to store the records of the screening securely. In addition, that team will also need to develop a policy for dealing with employees who become sick, tracing their contacts and deciding who to send home.
If all of this sounds complicated, that’s because it is. And when you keep in mind that you will have to comply with ADA requirements for people with health conditions that could be impacted by Covid-19, it gets even more so.
One solution to managing all of this is to work with your IT staff to find some checklist or task management software that can be adapted for use by your company as it plans the return of your employees. This way, while your team is deciding the policies that need to be in place, those same policies can be translated into checklist entries. There are some existing Covid-19 checklists that may give you a place to start.
Once a master list is created, you can break it down into functional sublists and parcel those out to individual areas of responsibility or departments. This will allow them to work on preparations in areas where they have the ability to get things ready.
“The most important part is to keep the safety of your employees top of mind,” Teachout said, “and to communicate with the team to relieve their anxiety about coming back.”
