5 Ways to Keep Your Employees Safe

If you’re thinking of having your employees come back to the office, have you also thought about their safety? Many people are becoming anxious about the idea of working on-site again with COVID still a factor. You want to ensure business continuity, and as an employer, you are responsible for keeping employees healthy and safe at work – they are, after all, the foundation of your business.

Here are 5 ways to keep your employee safe.

1. Create effective health and safety protocols

Employees always face some form of health risk at the workplace. However, COVID has made it an absolute must for businesses to put safety regulations in place to protect their employees. Some examples of good health and safety protocols include:

• Mandatory vaccination
• Wearing of masks
• Regular temperature checks
• Reminders for employees to constantly wash their hands
• Enforcing social distancing

When putting together a list of health protocols for your company, remember that some departments are at a greater risk than others and may require unique safety regulations for the best protection. For instance, front desk safety and security are very sensitive because receptionists engage in face-to-face interactions with visitors regularly.

2. Make the workplace safer

An unsafe environment can cause stress and anxiety in the workplace and can affect employee productivity. This is why it’s crucial to keep the office a safe environment where, at the very least, they can be away from health risks like COVID.

There are several ways you can make the company workplace a safe working environment for your employees:

• Install commercial air purifiers with replaceable HEPA filters
• Have a large stock of new, disposable face masks for employees entering and leaving the office
• Give employees easy access to antibacterial hand sanitizer
• Disinfect the workplace regularly
• Place plastic barriers where there’s a high risk of COVID

3. Provide a free shuttle service

Anything can happen in the daily commute, especially when your employees travel five days a week. Public transportation often leaves little (if any) guarantee of safety. Besides exposure to COVID, some of the issues they may face are:

• Exposure to people who may have COVID
• Getting sick from city pollution
• Facing heavy traffic
• Coping with bad weather
• Avoiding dangerous routes

Instead of leaving it up to chance, if you can, make your employees’ travels safe by providing a free shuttle service or help set up a carpool arrangement for the start and end of their work days. Offer to have the vehicles cleaned regularly to eliminate the risk of transmission. While this will incur some expenses on your part, the safety of your employees is a payoff that more than makes up for it.

4. Talk to your employees

Employee safety means more than physical health – it also involves their mental well-being. Despite how many protocols you can come up with, you can never guarantee that your employees will feel safe. Each of them has their unique circumstances that no number of company policies can ever compensate for.

Make your employees feel safe by talking to them wholeheartedly. Ask them how they’re feeling when they work in the office and if the health protocols in place are reassuring enough.

More than encouraging them to feel open, this lets you know what you can do to further improve the safety of the work environment.

5. Consider a remote work setup

If COVID taught us anything about work, it’s that we can often do it at home and still be productive.

Allowing employees to work remotely is the best way to keep them safe. It eliminates all the risks of traveling and situations where they can face COVID. Plus, they can reduce their own costs in commuting and buying food outside.

This point may worry you if you think you’ll be doing away with your leased workspace after paying for it. However, keep in mind that what makes the company is the employees, not the office space. Keep your employees safe, and the company will thrive.

Employee safety is vital to your company’s success, and your front office faces the most significant health risks from talking to people face-to-face every day. Consider using a virtual front desk solution provider like WelcomeWare. WelcomeWare can help you protect the health and safety of your front office receptionist allowing them to work remotely while also providing the capability to cover several sites simultaneously.