The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is going to last for a while. Many companies are facing hard times to manage their businesses during this pandemic. They are forced to change their policies and increase their protective measures to stay alive in the market.
There are two key points to manage your business during this COVID-19 outbreak- 1. Earn your clients’ or customers’ trust, and 2. Earn your employees’ trust. It’s not an easy job. You’ll have to provide enough securities to earn their trust. Here’s how you can do that-
Ensure Workplace Safety
Most state laws demand employers to ensure a healthy, safe workplace. Alberta’s Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) legislation also demands employers to do everything for their employees’ health and safety. In the light of COVID-19 pandemic, employers should consider-
- Sort out the legal obligations to provide a healthy and safe work environment.
- Develop a plan for the employees who have recently traveled from other countries or other states. Make it mandatory to self-isolate for 14 days for those employees.
- Determine how to incorporate the Public Health Agency of Canada and other public health protocols and guidelines.
- Analyze the rights and limitations of your company in diagnosing employees and including or excluding them from any events or activities in order to prevent COVID-19.
- Access the severity of the pandemic. Decide whether work from the home protocol is necessary or not. Determine what measures and accommodations are to be taken to ensure the work from the home protocol. You also need to ensure that the arrangement is in compliance with labor and wage laws.
Ensure Employee Safety and Privacy
Ensuring employee safety and privacy is one of the biggest concerns for employers during this coronavirus pandemic. Here’s what you should do as an employer-
- Sort out how your company should address at-risk employees. Develop a plan that works for everyone. It’s very crucial because the company shouldn’t discriminate against its employees.
- According to Alberta employment standards rules, If an employee gets sick, he/she can take job-protected leave. You need to plan how your company is going to compensate these employees. The compensation would depend on their exempt or non-exempt status, company’s policy, and sick leave history.
- Be careful about disclosing your employees’ health records. Check out how much information your company can disclose about its employees’ health status.
- Don’t ask the employees questions like, “ Do you test COVID-19 positive?” You should rather ask them if they have any symptoms of coronavirus.
- Check what the company health plan available to cover the COVID-19 positive employees.
Ensure Clients Safety
- Make sure that the clients feel safe when they deal with your employees.
- Make sure that your employees take enough safety measures if they have to contact the clients.
- Ensure that your clients are getting full support during their quarantine period.
- Device a simple and easy to use medium to contact with your clients.
- Give them about your business policy during this COVID-19 outbreak.
- Develop a plan that will work better for your customers in this pandemic situation.
The Bottom Line
The coronavirus is a highly contagious and deadly virus. Even with enough precautions, Canada is facing a tough time to deal with it. We all have to stay home if we want to slow down the pandemic. This is the only way. But if everybody has to stay home, it is naturally going to affect our business heavily. The price of the lock-down is too hard to bear.
So, what can we do about it? We may not stop the business loss, but we certainly can minimize it if we give our full effort and device an effective strategy. To do that, we have to ensure that the employees can continue their work in a safe environment, and the clients get better support.
