How to Add Pandemic-Proof Procedures Into Your Health and Safety Plan
Every employer has a responsibility to provide a safe working environment for their employees. A workplace should be free from hazards and help to promote the healthy and positive well-being of everyone who works there.
While the COVID-19 pandemic quickly brought workplace health and safety to the forefront of all employers’ minds, the preparedness of businesses across the globe differed depending on existing protocols. Some organizations were already set up to adjust to a remote workforce. Some had large office spaces where distancing was easy, and some were already using technology to track employee health and workflow—but this wasn’t the norm.
Most businesses were not ready for the upheaval COVID-19 brought down on workplaces. With hindsight on our side, now is the time for businesses to learn from this experience and future-proof your health and safety plan to make sure you aren’t caught unprepared again. Here are some of the ways you can plan now for future emergencies:
A Full Health and Safety Plan Review
There’s no doubt that most businesses have been updating health and safety or internal workflow processes throughout the past year to match changing regulations. Now is a great time to go back and review all the changes you’ve made and decide what might be valuable permanently. Is there anything you can revise? Is there anything to add that will make emergency responses faster in the future?
Think proactively and add permanent pandemic preparedness and response plans to your current policies, so managers and employees are in a better position to respond to health and safety concerns moving forward.
Keep Flexibility In Mind
By now, it’s clear that in industries where it’s possible, remote work (in some capacity) is here to stay. Have you evaluated your communication tools and work-from-home policies recently? If your business was new to remote work, check in with your employees. Survey them on their experience or find out what they liked/dislike about the experience?
The more flexibility you have in your internal processes, the easier it will be to adjust due to a future emergency. Flexible work schedules, open lines of communication, paid sick days, and support for those with children or other dependents are all ways employers can support employees during difficult times.
Workforce Tracking Tools
Monitoring employees coming and going became a massive part of many businesses’ health and safety responsibilities during the pandemic. From daily COVID-19 employee screenings and temperature checks to capacity limits and scheduling headaches, these procedures helped keep workplaces safe.
While mandatory screening regulations will change as COVID-19 becomes less prevalent, many businesses are seeing the benefits of automating employee check-in/out procedures giving employers a way to get instant visibility into who, where, when, and how people are working each day. Employee check-in and workflow automation technology, while currently being used as a COVID-19 necessity, can easily become a way to digitize and simplify business processes – plus all your employees are already used to it!
Remote Information Portal
Forget the health and safety plan hidden on the top shelf in the HR department, having one centralized portal for all health and safety information has never been more important than during the last year. Employees need reliable, accurate, and easy to access information in the case of an emergency.
If you haven’t already, investing in a cloud-based information and document sharing forum is a simple way to ensure you are prepared for anything that arises.
More Data = Easier Decision Making
From video communication tools and project management platforms to operations software and screening apps, COVID-19 has brought many businesses into a new world of technology. With these kinds of technology comes a massive increase in data and useable insights to improve decisions making. What are you doing with this information?
Take the time to review the information you’ve gathered over the last year, is there anything you can use to improve your policies or work trends that help illustrate when your employees are most productive? Your technology is only as good as the information you get from it.
The old saying remains, fail to plan—plan to fail. At Go Evo, we’ve been helping businesses all over North America navigate how to keep operations running while enforcing all COVID-19 protocols. Our Personal Protective App is a health and safety platform designed to make our clients’ workdays easier and keep workplaces safe. Want to learn more? Discover PPA here.