3 Important Ways To Keep Your Business and Workplace Covid Safe

Everyone in Papua New Guinea has a part to play to ensure everything possible is done to stop the spread of Coronavirus (COVID-19). We have put together a resource with three crucial categories businesses should be focused on and actions they should be taking to ensure they do their part. Can you say you are doing all this in your workplace?

Businesses and business owners have a huge responsibility to their staff, their customers and the public to ensure that they are providing safe environments for all against COVID-19 and that ownership is taken to adhere to all best practices for prevention.

If you fail to do so, not only do you risk the health of others, but you may also risk substantial penalties, as well as damage to your business reputation or ongoing operations.

There are some clear steps and actions that every business can take to ensure they protect against this very serious pandemic.

Here are three categories to prevent the spread in your workplace, and actionable things you can do in your business.

HEALTH AND SAFETY ACTIONS

Businesses should be adding in additional health and safety practices in their workplace specific to COVID-19 in addition to normal health and safety policies.

Enforce social distancing in your workplace, ensuring colleagues and customers stay at least 1.5metre away from each other.
Ensure there is no contact between colleagues and clients – this includes no handshakes, hugs or fist bumps. Encourage people to smile, nod or say hello as a greeting, but do not make physical contact.
Have ample areas your staff can wash their hands with soap or antibacterial wash.
Provide alcohol-based hand sanitiser to your staff and customers to use regularly and encourage customers to sanitise their hands as they enter your business.
Encourage staff to wear a facemask, especially if they cannot keep a social distance consistently.
Have a health and safety policy that ensures all staff are aware and trained in all best practices including clean hands, not touching their face, social distancing and staying home and seeking medical advice if they are unwell.

DISINFECTION ACTIONS

Along with your regular workplace cleaning, it is crucial that you take extra steps to stop the spread.

Have a clear plan to clean and disinfect your workplace regularly. This includes all surfaces, particularly door handles, phones, keyboards, elevator and other buttons, and bathrooms.
To ensure you disinfect your workplace to the highest standard, use a powerful, high-grade disinfection service (like what we offer at ProPest). This disinfection service focuses on high-risk contact surfaces, or hard to reach areas for maximum effectiveness.

REMEMBER: COVID-19 can be spread from person to person, but it also spread on surfaces, where one infected person touches a surface or object, and then an uninfected person touches that same contaminated surface or object.

For this reason, you need to put in place safeguards between people, but also safeguards to ensure the disinfection of your business area. Contact ProPest to talk about how we can help you with this today.

BUSINESS OPERATION ACTIONS

You may need to consider changes in your business operations to keep a safe environment. Every workplace and business will be different, and the Government may have rules about your particular industry, however, here are some general things to consider:

Limit the number of customers or employees in a space.
Limit large in-person gatherings or hold meetings over the phone or internet.
Ensure people don’t share equipment, including phones and computer equipment.
Stagger breaks to limit the people in the kitchen or break area.
Set up any check out areas so people can have at least 1.5metres between them and any other people. You may even want to make marks on the floor for them to follow.
Remove any self-service stations (or disinfect these after every customer).
Display signs with information for all people in your business area. You can find signs prepared by the Government here: https://covid19.info.gov.pg/index.php/covid-19-awareness/

These above tips may help you play your part to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and keep your staff, customers and business safe. You can find exact government information here: https://covid19.info.gov.pg/

If you would like support with the crucial action of disinfection, contact our team at ProPest today.

Through our specially selected eco-friendly disinfectant that kills 99.99% of bacteria on environmental surfaces, we can ensure you reduce the risk and spread of COVID-19. We focus on high-risk and hard to reach surfaces to protect your business and the community.

Our professionally trained team are experts at what we do, and there is minimal downtime through this safe and effective treatment option.