NSC: 10 steps to ensure staff safety on reopening amid Covid19

The National Safety Council (NSC), in association with the SAFER task force, has announced 10 steps that all employers must take to prioritise workplace safety post-Covid-19 quarantine and lockdowns worldwide.

Reopening businesses and returning employees to traditional work environments post-quarantine will be the most nuanced and complex actions employers will undertake in the coming months, according to the NSC. To help them prioritise safety during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, the NSC, based on recommendations from its SAFER task force, has identified the 10 universal actions every employer must consider before reopening. It has also released a series of playbooks with in-depth recommendations for doing it safely. 

NSC’s SAFER task force comprises a group of experts from companies of all sizes, safety organisations, nonprofits, government agencies and public health organisations, and is the first US task force to focus on worker safety. 

10 ACTION STEPS

According to NSC, the 10 universal actions every employer must take before reopening, should include: 

1. Phasing: Create a phased transition to return to work aligned with risk and exposure levels. 
2. Sanitise: Before employees return, disinfect the workplace and make any physical alterations needed for physical distancing. 
3. Screenings: Develop a health status screening process for all employees. 
4. Hygiene: Create a plan to handle sick employees, and encourage safe behaviours for good hygiene and infection control. 
5. Tracing: Follow proper contact tracing steps if workers get sick to curb the spread of COVID-19. 
6. Mental Health: Commit to supporting the mental and emotional health of your workers by sharing support resources and policies. 
7. Training: Train leaders and supervisors not only on the fundamentals of safety such as risk assessment and hazard recognition, but also on the impacts of COVID-19 on mental health and wellbeing, as employees will feel the effects of the pandemic long after it is over. 
8. Engagement Plan: Notify employees in advance of the return to work, and consider categorising workers into different groups based on job roles – bringing groups back one at a time. 
9. Communication: Develop a communications plan to be open and transparent with workers on your return to work process. 
10. Assessment: Outline the main factors your organisation is using as guidance to provide a simplistic structure to the extremely complex return to work decision.

PRIORITISING STAFF SAFETY

Commenting on the 10 steps, Lorraine M Martin, President and CEO of the NSC, stated: “Protecting our workers means coalescing around sets of safety principles and ensuring those principles guide our decisions. Employers are asking for help, and we’ve brought together leading safety experts to deliver in this time of need. We hope these universal actions, the detailed playbooks and the recommendations within them will help employers safely navigate reopening operations while prioritising employees’ rights to safe work environments.”

This announcement follows the release of NSC and the SAFER task force framework from which employers should develop reopening action plans, as reported.  The framework breaks down considerations within six key areas: physical environments, medical issues, mental health, communication needs, external considerations and employment and human resources. NSC researchers have also created playbooks with detailed recommendations for each of the six key areas, as well as guidance for four specific environments – office spaces, closed industrial settings, open industrial settings and public spaces.

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