Opening offices after the pandemic

The new Omicron variant has delayed plans to reopen office spaces. Now, employers need to figure out how to balance business needs while ensuring employee retention.

When offices do open up, employers will need to implement creative and adaptable processes in addition to the existing ones, to contain future threats of Covid-19.

This is important because vaccination rates are still low in several parts of the country, including India.

Here’s a checklist for employers to follow in the near future

Educate employees and inform them about the importance of getting tested, being transparent about illnesses, and maintaining social distance and personal hygiene.

Enforce wearing masks to protect those with Covid-19 from infecting others. Employers should insist on even vaccinated workers wearing masks while at work.

Enforce vaccinations and compel employees to get vaccinated by following a ‘No Jab, No Job’ principle. Unvaccinated employees should not be allowed to work or even enter the common areas like cafeteria. Employers can also cooperate with government bodies to organise vaccination drives at the workplace. Employer organisations can also arrange for pooled vaccination drives in the industrial estates.

Enforce social distancing by arranging flexible schedules, remote / hybrid / staggered working to enforce social distancing at the workplace. Employers can post reminders through posters, remove alternate seats in the cafeteria, and place sanitiser dispensers in common social areas to enforce Covid norms.

Ensure more ventilated workplaces to reduce the likelihood of infection by fixing filtration, air exchangers, and opening windows. Avoid ultraviolet lights.

Engage in periodical testing or insist on employees testing under observation. Also follow up with confirmatory tests for those with no symptoms but are found positive. Employees who are ill should not allowed to come to the workplace.

Enable mental health care to tackle issues of anxiety, depression or other issues. Here, employers can provide virtual counseling and digital mental health care. Offering to foot a part of the mental healthcare cost can also help

Ensure regular sanitising by disinfecting high-touch, high-traffic workplaces to eliminate possible transmission of the virus.

(The author is a former professor at a management institute in Bengaluru)