A Guide To A Secure Office Post-Covid

A guide to making your workplace secure and safe for employees returning to the office.

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The coronavirus pandemic has drastically altered workplace operations around the world. Employees are either fully working from home or operating in a hybrid system. A new reality is being faced by both small and corporate businesses. Despite being in the second wave of the pandemic, there is still good news rolling out. Vaccines are being distributed in most countries which directly dictates to offices opening up again. So, no more from your bed! With that being said, it is only natural to be concerned while there is still a deadly virus roaming around us. So is it safe to be at work again?

CBM is here to help you transition into working from the office again by providing you with set guidelines on how you can make your workplace safe for yourself and others.

Guide to a secure workplace for employees in the face of the coronavirus pandemic:

Update your entry protocols

First, implement and maintain standard operating procedures (SOPs) as the risk of catching the virus is still there. Checking fever and using hand sanitizers are some of the many important steps that must be followed to ensure everyone’s safety.

Some companies are doing this manually by having a designated person check the employees for high temperatures. While a good initiative, it is time-consuming, and the individual responsible for it can easily be burnt out.

A much more efficient tool is required to manage a large crowd, save time, and maintain a safe distance. By installing a temperature scanning device with an in-built attendance, the protocol is the need-of-the-hour. Such devices use an IR thermal scanner and a camera to detect a person’s temperature and facial features, which get verified by the company’s database containing the employees’ pictures. Additionally, it can also be integrated with the building’s security system, which means that the employee walking in the building must be identified first and has to have a normal temperature. If the employee qualifies the set threshold, the device will then automatically unlock the door.

The temperature scanner is also capable of printing out tags for external persons entering the building after they have been allowed by the admin to enter the building for a specific amount of time. Check out one of the best such devices, OneScreen GoSafe.

An employee scanning his temperature using a facial temperature scanner

Revamp your purification system

Medical research has proved that Covid-19 is an airborne virus and spreads by aerosols suspended in the air. In simpler terms, exhaling, talking, and coughing can all play a role in spreading it.

According to the New England Journal of Medicine, SARS-CoV-2 can survive in aerosol form for up to three hours (Baraniuk, 2021)

This poses a great risk to employees working in confined spaces. Luckily, better than ever, innovations are set up to limit the danger by decontaminating the air inside a room. That innovation is called an Air purifier.

In the market, there is a wide range of air purifiers available to meet everyone’s requirements. (Check out CBM’s wide range of Air Purifiers here.) They come in different sizes and specifications, allowing people to choose the ideal one as per the room size and requirements.

Aeromax air purifier, for example, removes around 99.7% of airborne particles as small as 0.3 microns, which includes but is not limited to cigarette smoke, allergens, and viruses.

Employees have a stress-free meeting with an air purifier doing its job in the back.

Adequately equip your employees.

An employer can only do so much while combating a pandemic. Ultimately, it comes down to individual efforts and precautions that will minimize the risk of catching and spreading a deadly virus. Employers can encourage this behavior on an individual level by providing adequate supplies such as sanitizers, alcohol wipes, etc. This, in return, will encourage the employees to keep their workspaces clean, which directly helps in containing the spread of COVID.

An employee cleans their keyboard and other items with an alcoholic wipe

Isolate individual workspaces

Since the beginning of COVID-19, maintaining a safe distance of 6 feet has been promoted. The transition of going back to work means that the 6-feet distance rule has to be followed more than ever. Companies are encouraged to isolate workspaces which can be either accomplished by having employees sit one workspace apart or putting up partitions between individuals. Such practices can help prevent the transmission of the virus.

Furthermore, introducing dry-erase panels to take notes on will bring creativity into the workplace. It will allow everyone not to feel restricted and confined and will encourage them to brainstorm.

While we have had a longing for things to go back to “normal,” we must not forget that there is still a deadly virus out there. Therefore, employers and employees need to equip themselves with the necessary tools so the transmission can be prevented.