Outline all health & safety precautions to the whole company.
It’s important for employers to be clear with their employees about exactly what the company is doing to keep them safe, post-pandemic. An email to the whole team is great, or you could go one step further and host a meeting to talk about the measures, ensuring everyone’s questions are answered.
It’s also wise to communicate with managers and provide them with tools and/or ideas for how they can best support their teams as everyone adapts to the new normal.
Communicate employees’ options for returning or WFH.
As soon as you’ve determined parameters and/or schedules pertaining to employees’ presence in the office, it’s critical to communicate these parameters clearly to all employees, so they can plan their life around it.
You may want to collaborate with your employees on their options for returning to the office or WFH. By understanding each employee’s unique professional role and personal lifestyle, you can devise a plan that respects both workplace safety and your employees’ needs.
Provide simple, clear instructions on updated food protocol.
We recommend taking the time to communicate with the team specifically about updated food protocol not only to reassure your employees that food safety measures are being taken, but also because you want everyone to understand how to follow the protocol.
Communications should explain how common areas work with respect to physical distancing (whether it involves distance markers or staggered breaks), how foodservice works (from coffee & snacks to food delivery & disposal), and it should feature very clear steps that all employees can follow.
Send a supportive message about social distancing.
Returning to the office with all new rules for how to interact with each other is not a simple task. This could be psychologically challenging for more than a few of your employees, which is why we recommend communicating a message of encouragement and support.
Make the message clear that the best way we can care for each other is by keeping six feet apart. Remind them of the critical impact these distancing measures have on our collective well-being, and encourage them to express their feelings if they’re ever struggling with it.
Create a health & safety hub for all related communications.
Because it’s so important to clearly communicate your health & safety protocol with your team, we recommend gathering all communications that pertain to health & safety and organizing them in one location; this could be a company intranet or HR system.
Keeping a central location for your health & safety communications will make it easier to educate new hires on proper protocol. It also makes it easier to review and update your policies in the future, in order to adapt to company changes or greater societal changes.