WORKING SAFELY DURING COVID-19

Risk Assessment
I have received many calls from clients, who have been asking me for guidance on working safely during the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. 
 
Here are some guidelines to how we can help you work safely and to help you manage the risk associated with running your business at this time.
As an employer, you must protect people from harm. This includes taking reasonable steps to protect your workers and others from coronavirus. This is called a risk assessment and it’ll help you manage risk and protect people.
 
You must:

• identify what work activity or situations might cause transmission of the virus
• think about who could be at risk
• decide how likely it is that someone could be exposed
• act to remove the activity or situation, or if this isn’t possible, control the risk
• If you have fewer than five employees, you don’t have to write anything down, but it could help if you do because those actually doing the job will be able to identify the risk to their health.

 
Practical measures you can take, for example:

• putting in place social distancing measures
• staggering shifts
• providing additional hand washing/sanitation facilities

 
Talk to staff and provide information
By consulting and involving people in the steps you are taking to manage the risk of coronavirus in your workplace you can:

• explain the changes you are planning that will help everyone work safely during Covid-19
• make sure changes will work and hear their ideas
• continue to operate your business safely during the outbreak

 
Work from home
Everyone who can work from home should do so. To help your people work from home you should:

• provide the equipment they need, for example a computer, phone and videoconferencing facilities
• keep in regular contact with them, making sure you discuss their well-being.

 
Make your workplace COVID-Secure
If through your risk assessment you have identified people who cannot work from home, then you should consider what changes you might need in your workplace to reduce risk and make it ‘COVID-secure’.

 
Entrances and Exits

• Stagger arrival and departure times so that people do not use entry and exit points at the same time.
• Provide hand washing facilities so people can wash their hands when they get into and leave work (provide hand sanitiser throughout your premises and at workstations/printers etc).

 
Social distancing

• Keep work areas 2 metres apart and allocate one person only to each work area. If this is not possible, then keep the number of people in each work area as low as possible.

 
To help workers to social distance you can:

• use floor tape or paint to mark work areas
• provide signage to remind people to keep their distance from others
• use screens to create a physical barrier between people
• have people working side-by-side rather than face-to-face
• limit movement of people
• rotating between jobs and equipment

 
If you need guidance or assistance with any HR issue, redundancy situations, or indeed to help you bring back your employees during these very challenging times, please do not hesitate to contact us.