You’ve heard. Now you need to act.
If you had hoped the pandemic had faded away, you need to buckle down once more. The highly contagious delta variant has caused illness and hospitalizations to rise. While it spreads primarily among the unvaccinated, no one is immune. Further, new variants could prove even more threatening.
What does that mean to you as an employer? To you as an employee? What do businesses need to do to provide their employees and customers with safe workplaces and businesses?
Keep infections out of the workplace
If you’ve let yourself relax your safety precautions, you need to tighten them again to keep infections out of your workplace.
Encourage vaccination
Vaccination remains the best method for you and your employees to stay COVID-free.
If you’re an employer, remove any barriers that prevent your employees from getting vaccinated. Provide them time off for vaccination and for any vaccination side effects. Consider onsite vaccination clinics or work out an arrangement with a nearby physician’s office or pharmacy. If your employees have been swallowing misinformation, provide accurate information to them.
If you’re an employee who’s put off getting a vaccination, contact your medical provider and ask them the questions you need to reassure yourself that it makes sense to get one without delay.
Consider mandating vaccination
Many employers, including Facebook, Google, Tyson Foods, the Walt Disney Co., Houston Methodist Medical Center, United Airlines, Cisco, Walgreens, DoorDash, the Washington Post and Frontier Airlines, now require that all U.S. onsite employees secure vaccinations by September. The Pentagon will require all active-duty troops to attain vaccinations by Sept. 15. If you’re an employer, you may want to join their ranks.
It’s likely that increasing numbers of employers will require all onsite employees become vaccinated once the U.S. Food and Drug Administration fully approves one or more COVID-19 vaccines.
Monitor local transmission rates
If local transmission rates accelerate, many employers may change their return-to-the-office plans. You can monitor Alaska-specific rates by region on the Department of Health and Social Services site. When the weekly infection rates exceed 50 per 100,000, it becomes likely that employees may bring COVID-19 into the workplace.
“It’s great to see you from 6 feet away”
Employers need to use every method, including remote work, flexible schedules, temperature checks and mandated social distancing to prevent an infected employee from infecting others. Employees need to do their part for their own safety and that of their coworkers and customers.
Recommend or require masks
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that any unvaccinated individual — employee or customer — wear a mask indoors when with others in areas where case numbers are surging.
[Related: CDC urges masking in all schools and by vaccinated people in some indoor situations]
Masks serve two purposes. They help protect you and other employees from becoming infected. They also help you and other employees to not infect coworkers and customers. If you’re a business, you can ask all customers or vendors to wear masks once they enter the premises.
Employers may also need to schedule when unvaccinated employees occupy breakrooms or cafeterias in which mask-wearing is difficult. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s guidelines can help employers avoid complaints under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Any immune-compromised employee needs to wear a well-fitting mask.
If your workplace experiences a COVID-19 infection
Employers need to instruct employees to stay home when ill and to accommodate employees who lack sufficient sick leave. Employers need to respect the medical privacy of employees who report they have COVID-19 and also let other employees know that someone in their workplace has contracted COVID-19 so coworkers can make wise choices. According to the CDC, vaccinated employees exposed to COVID-19 do not need to quarantine if asymptomatic.
Improve ventilation
Open your workplace windows when and if you can. When you increase the amount of air exchanged indoors, you help decrease the rate of infection. Most workplaces can add more air exchanges and improve filtration systems by modifying existing air-handling systems.
Testing
In areas where where free testing is not available, employers may want to let employees know the employer will pay for employees to get tested for COVID-19.
Business travel
With videoconferencing as a reasonable alternative, employers need to be cautious about asking employees to travel to sites in which COVID-19 infection risks are high.
Finally, while it’s tempting to think we’ve emerged from the pandemic tunnel, recent infection and hospitalization rates prove that’s not the case. We need to knuckle down and continue to play our A game.