For Essential Businesses, we want to ensure that business owners in our community as well as their employees and customers stay safe and healthy.
As such, the clinical leaders at Lakeland Regional Health have long been experts in Infectious Disease Prevention and want to provide you with suggestions to create and maintain a safe work environment during this COVID-19 pandemic. We’ve compiled information from our Infectious Disease experts and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The following tips can help you care for and protect your employees and customers/clients during this time. (We encourage you to first follow any corporate guidelines given by your particular organization.)
Hand Hygiene
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Disinfecting high-touch surfaces, such as laptops, is essential. Encourage and allow employees to wash their hands with soap and water as often as possible and/or provide hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol.
- Assign someone to routinely clean surfaces in employee areas with soap and water or disinfecting wipes. Frequently touched sites include tables, doorknobs, light switches, countertops, handles, desks, phones, keyboards, toilets, faucets, sinks, microwaves, etc. Workplace disinfecting guidance.
General Prevention Measures:
- Design work environment with a 6 foot separation from others
- Don’t shake hands
- Keep surfaces decluttered and disinfected
- Consider staggering shifts or working alternate days to reduce number of people
- Work from home
- Conduct virtual meetings
- If possible, don’t share phones, desks or other equipment
- Self-monitor for symptoms: fever, cough shortness of breath (hard time breathing); consider initiating temperature checks periodically
- Use engineering controls such as increasing ventilation rates or putting up physical barriers like sneeze guards
- If a workspace is shared, employees should clean touch surfaces at the beginning and ending of their shifts.
In addition to keeping your employees safe, your customers have adjusted their shopping and dining habits based on local, state and federal guidelines. Think of innovative ways to ensure the safety of your customers and clients during this time. Consider the following infection prevention tips for your customers and clients:
- Frequently check restrooms and other areas for adequate supplies of soap and paper towels
- Try to set standards where individuals stay 6 feet away from others
- Limit the number of customers in the store or business at a time
- Keep surfaces decluttered and disinfected
- Provide access to wipes, trashcans, and even tissues
- Assign someone to routinely clean highly touched surfaces (door handles, shopping carts and baskets, electronic payment devices, etc) with soap and water or disinfecting wipes.
- Consider using cashless and cardless transactions; over-the-phone orders with credit cards, not requiring signatures on receipts (so that pens aren’t shared).
Thank you for playing a vital part in slowing the spread of COVID-19. Lakeland Regional Health is grateful to be a part of this exceptional community.