On previous blogs, we have discussed the different challenges that employers are facing and shared some strategies that you can follow to ensure a safe return to work. Given the uncertainty of how this health emergency will evolve, many questions have risen within the workforce. However, one of the biggest concerns is the capability of certain industries to reactivate their activities safely.
It’s possible that certain employees feel more concerned about returning to work because of the nature of their work activities, especially if they have to interact with other people all day or it’s not easy to keep distance among workers.
So, what employees are at higher risk of exposure when returning to work? How do they perceive their safety? In this blog, we are going to share our findings on these questions.
Employees at higher risk and concerns
According to recent surveys, customer-facing businesses like retail and restaurants, entertainment, recreation, offices, personal care and education are some main industries that show the highest concern regarding returning to work safely. Actually, Bain and Company says that more than 60% of educational professionals are more concerned about returning to the classroom than other sites.
The LinkedIn's latest Workforce Confidence Index survey shows that over 70% of surveyed employees in retail, education and entertainment are concerned about the exposure to others who are not taking the safety precautions. In education and entertainment, over 30% said they are concerned about the lack of workplace sanitization.
In addition to this, workers' concerns of returning to work vary by sector. At least 25% of employees in industries such as construction and manufacturing reported no concerns about returning to their workplace. By contrast, only 11-12% of those who are in retail, entertainment and educational said they have no concerns.
A different survey conducted by Bain and Company points that the top five most important safety measures for employees who are returning to their workplace are: the ability of face masks and plastic gloves, physical distancing, ability of disinfectants products like sprays and wipes, frequent procedures of cleaning and notification if exposed to infected person.
As more and more employees are going back to the workplaces and the coronavirus disease still spreads across the country, we believe that more businesses will continue facing different challenges through the path. It will be necessary to analyze what kind of adjustments are necessary to extend worker protection such as conducting personnel health and safety procedures, adaptation of job routines as well as adapting compensation and benefits according to the level of risk of the worker.
Kwema builds safer workplaces by providing safety wearables to employees who are exposed to potential risks and hazards at their job every day. Our safety devices activate an emergency protocol alerting safety supervisors or 911, and are designed to avoid adoption hurdles and training costs.
In today's era Kwema helps to prevent potential COVID-19 outbreaks at workplaces with Contact Tracing functionality. If someone is diagnosed positive for COVID-19, our technology allows you to trace where the employee was, identify who they may have come into contact with and classify all employees into 3 groups of risk and take action to prevent spread.
Watch how Kwema is disrupting workplace safety
Photo by Adam Winger on Unsplash
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