Many businesses are presently under lock and key due to the coronavirus pandemic. What was initially believed to be just regular flu soon turned into a global pandemic.
Organizations around the world have now resorted to the work from home policy to keep their employees safe and operations running to a certain extent. However, with each passing day, people are only growing anxious about when everything will be normal again. But with no cure developed yet, the overall situation doesn’t seem to get better anytime soon.
Also, a lot of things have changed now, and the old ways of micro-managing a business don’t seem to be valid in today’s date. It’s now time for organizations to start thinking about their approach once the lockdown eases or is over.
Ensure your workplace is safe and sanitized
The first and foremost thing that you should do as an employer is to make sure that all your working locations are safe and properly sanitized ahead of marking the first day after the lockdown. For this, instruct the cleaners to use alcohol-based disinfectants, which are proven against many germs and viruses, including the COVID-19. Place hand sanitizers and tissues at all the common areas around the workplace. At the same time, you must also ensure that these things are refilled or replaced from time to time.
Classify your employees with respiratory ailments
Even though every one of us is equally vulnerable to the COVID-19, it possesses a threat, especially to those who have any respiratory illness or are suffering from chronic diseases. With this, the other important task for you is to classify your employees who might be suffering from such conditions. Here, it would be better for you to ask these employees to continue with their work from home schedules to keep them as well as the others safe. Doing this would also allow you to minimize the congestion at the workplace, making adequate space for the employees.
Arrange safe transportation means for your employees
Employees who use their own vehicles are still relatively safe compared to those who use alternative means to get to their workplace. Hence, you should definitely consider arranging some transportation medium for your employees to mitigate the risk for them coming in contact with the virus.
Implement measures for ensuring psychological safety
The lockdown days have been really tough as we are all caged within the four walls of our house. However, from an employee’s point of view, these days have helped them spend some quality time with their families while being at work at the same time. However, coming out of this period is not going to be an easy affair, as there’ll still be a cloud of uncertainty regarding the pandemic. And this is going to affect the productivity of your employees at the workplace severely. Therefore, you should take all possible measures to ensure that your employees feel psychologically safe while at work.
Reduce all business-related travels
Another point to add to your post lockdown strategy checklist is to curb down all non-essential business travels for everyone in the organization. Initiating lockdown and practicing social distancing are only temporary solutions to slow down the spread of COVID-19. So, even after the lockdown is lifted, the risk of COVID-19 will still persist. Therefore, you must make it a point and also encourage everyone to continue with their online collaborations.
