Como gerenciar novos protocolos à medida que os funcionários voltam ao escritório

How to manage new protocols as employees return to the office

With the virus not receding as expected nearly two years later, many companies are still determining what is best for their companies and employees.

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Since COVID-19 arrived in the U.S. in early 2020, HR professionals and facility managers have struggled to determine how to keep their companies running smoothly while helping employees stay healthy. and keep up with changing conditions. In the beginning, the challenge was creating successful remote work environments. Once vaccines became available, the questions became whether to institute vaccine mandates and allow workers to return to the office.

When the virus continued to spread even after vaccines became widely available, company leaders questioned whether it made sense to keep offices open or partially open, and if so, under what conditions. With the virus not receding as expected nearly two years later, many companies are still determining what is best for their companies and employees. In doing so, they are dealing with many concerns.

The situation remains complex and challenging and some operations may be unsure about all the issues to be considered. That's why we created this list of topics to reflect on. It may not cover every requirement for every organization, but it offers a starting point for some of the most important ones, including monitoring health status, monitoring staff and creating a healthy work environment.

Determine new rules

To know what processes you need to develop to safely welcome employees back to the office, first determine what rules you want them to follow. Here are some ideas to get started:

  • Vaccine mandate. This decision is probably the biggest one you will have to make. A mandate may be offensive to some employees, while the lack of one may be unacceptable to others. The topic is complex and beyond the scope of this post, but many resources are available to help you determine what is best for your organization.
  • COVID screenings. Regardless of whether or not you implement a vaccination mandate, you may want to require that employees – as well as others who enter your facility – be regularly tested for the virus.
  • Health checks. Another way to ensure team members don't show up to work sick is to create a way for them to communicate their symptoms and other important information (like exposure to others who may have contracted the virus).
  • Mask mandate. Masking is still one of the best ways to prevent the spread of the virus. Because it is easy and inexpensive, most companies should require it for employees who work in the office. However, some companies may have specific reasons for not doing so, such as having only vaccinated people spread out widely.
  • Sanitation stations. To create an environment that encourages healthy behaviors, consider creating sanitation stations that have items like masks and hand sanitizer. They should be placed throughout the office so they are easy to access.
  • Office reservations (hospitality). Social distancing can still help prevent the spread of the virus and one way to achieve this in the office is to limit the number of people present at any given time. You can set up a system for workers to make reservations to work at certain times, a practice known as hospitality.
  • Occupancy rules. You can also limit how many people are in a certain location when employees arrive at the office. As team members move between offices and facility rooms, you can use technology to track and limit the number allowed in each space.
  • Touchless architecture. To prevent people from coming into contact with surfaces, you can install accessories such as touchless bathroom faucets and doors that open automatically when they detect a person nearby or through the use of an app.
  • Travel, meetings and amenities. Finally, you might consider limiting behaviors that are most likely to put people at risk, including meetings or conferences that involve travel, in-person meetings, or even having a coffee shop where employees often gather and talk at length.

The decisions you make at this stage will help you determine which technologies or processes you need to adopt. We'll explore these solutions in the following sections.

Tracking Health

Companies implementing a vaccination mandate will need a way to verify that employees have complied with it. Some are using the honor system, asking workers to provide accurate information about their vaccination status. Others are manually checking CDC vaccination cards. Still others use apps that can check and, in some cases, verify CDC information. Some of these apps can also be used to track COVID test results and self-reported or employer-collected health status information.

Before implementing such applications, familiarize yourself with potential employee concerns, such as those expressed in the following report:

Tracking Personnel

As with health monitoring processes, there are many ways to monitor personnel. For a small office, an Excel spreadsheet may work to record who will be in which office at what time. Larger organizations may need a more sophisticated system. Computerworld explains, “Most of these platforms allow companies to upload an office floor plan that shows individual workspaces… in addition to meeting rooms and common areas…. Employees use web or mobile apps to search for available workspaces for a given day and reserve a desk in advance.”

Using sensors, other platforms are available to track human movement and how many people are in a given space at one time, and then prevent others from entering that area until someone leaves.

Creating a healthy environment

To maintain a clean and healthy environment, office managers can simply implement rules about hand washing, mask wearing, facility cleaning , and other healthy practices. As mentioned above, placing hand sanitizers and other supplies should be in areas where people are likely to need them most, such as in “high-touch” areas, including doorways, elevators, water fountains, and welcome desks. .

New technologies can be used to help team members remain contact-free. They include automatic lighting, heating and cooling systems that turn on lights when people are present, as well as app and sensor combinations that allow workers to operate doors and elevators using just their phones.

Source: BairesDev

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