Businesses Should Handle the Coronavirus

How Businesses Should Handle the Coronavirus pneumonia outbreak.Challenges for business in handling coronavirus epidemic or pandemic.

Corona – the deadly disease has arrived in many offices and employers around the world. The number is still increasing after every passing day. Around 93,526 coronavirus infection cases have been reported. It is far outpacing the SARS epidemic in the early 2000s. About 81 countries and territories around the world got affected, and 51,019 people only got recovered till now.

The daily reported cases outside of china have gone up considerably. Italy, South Korea and Iran are emerging as new hotbeds.

With coronavirus continuing to spread across the world, we have put together a handy guide. It is on the best practices companies, and human resources departments should follow to help their employees stay healthy and infection-free.

How Businesses Should Handle the Coronavirus Outbreak to ensure employees stay healthy and infection-free

• Effective Communication is Key

HR departments should pull together every information about the coronavirus to create a ready-to-refer instructional guide for employees. It not only educates them about the infection but also enlists the ideal ways to avoid it.

The communication strategy must be multi-pronged. You should use all channels of communication available to make the employees aware. You can use bulletin boards, stick posters on the wall, infographics, emails, videos, and any mode of media that could help to communicate the message to all employees effectively

The gathered information should only be from credible and verified sources. You can refer useful online pages, the CDC website, and reputable news outlets that attribute their knowledge to either statement made by governmental agencies, or health professionals engaged in the virus researching.

Execute Flexible Working Arrangement Plans or BCP Protocols. It is essential for the countries that share a border with China or have multiple reported cases of coronavirus infection. Allowing employees to work from home is a great way to prevent contamination, given that human-to-human transmission is possible.

By implementing flexible working arrangements, you can eliminate the possibility of transmission at the office and also during the commute. It is the best solution to help people in densely populated cities or packed urban areas to stay away from the disease. Employees can use chat platforms, project management dashboards and other platforms that are online or on the cloud.

It might not be possible for work that is location-dependent, though. Still, the CDC and WHO websites have laid out ways to avoid viral infections. They are implementing non-invasive approaches like face masks, alcohol-based hand sanitisers, and maintaining good personal hygiene.

• Reconsider employees Leave Policies

The last thing a company wants is an infected employee to turn up to work as they have no enough paid time off left. That not only hurts the sick worker who has to stress himself out to get to work, but also their colleague, as well as everyone and everything they encounter and touch on the way.

When a company is result-driven, no matter whether the employee work from home or in the office. You just need to ensure the work is getting delivered on time. As we have plenty of developments in today’s technology, there is a suite of solutions for companies to conduct meetings, discussions, and day-to-day work can go as usual.

For employees that are being sick, or start feeling ill during the day, especially those who are travelling, calling and notifying health authorities should be a priority. Fear mongering and forcing the sick employee into isolation, against their will, must be avoided at any costs until advised by the medical authority.

• Using technology to avoid human contact might not be a bad thing.

Platforms that let teams collaborate and communicate efficiently can be used during work-from-home days. Meetings can get done over Google Hangouts, Skype, or Zoom, while real-time collaborations can do using free platforms like Collabedit.

Other HR Initiatives, apart from providing free masks, and hand wash sanitisers, the cleaning schedule of the workspace can be increased.

• Senior management should make sure they mask up wherever appropriate to.

Temperature taking could be incorporated so that everyone in the workspace would have peace of mind and not be paranoid that their colleagues may get infected. Such information should be openly available so that workers have complete trust in the information provided.

Lastly, lunch could be catered to minimize employees’ exposure to crowded areas like the food centre.

The Corona crisis has now reached a new critical phase, and we need to take proper measures to take adequate care of ourselves and our family. Follow the above handy guide on best practices companies and human resources departments should deploy, and you’re your employees avoid exposure to the new virus strain.