Employers Returning Staff to the Workplace Need to Plan Carefully and Manage Workers Fears

We talked to Brian Carmody, President of Right Height Manufacturing, to get his thoughts on the actions employers are taking, to help employees feel safe and protected – particularly in co-working and shared workspaces used by so many part-office, part-remote employers

So, the governor of your state has lifted the Covid stay-at-home orders and your employees are all excited to resume working at their old workstation “sardined” alongside their coworkers, right?

Not quite.

According to a survey conducted by PwC this Summer, “70% of workers said there are several factors preventing them from wanting to return to the office, with 51% stating that the fear of getting sick was their primary worry.”[1]

CBS News reported on consulting firm Korn Ferry’s survey which arrived at the same results: 49% of respondents reported they were afraid to return to the office. Notably, these surveys were conducted after the plexiglass industry experienced sky-rocketing sales as a result of companies installing sneeze guards around workstations, office spaces reconfigured to promote social distancing, and employees staggered shifts to further reduce proximity risks.[2]

I’m not arguing that those measures don’t help, but the survey results show that they haven’t been enough to reduce employee fears of returning to their offices. And even many remote workers will inevitably need to make their way into the office at some point as many employers roll out a hybrid model of remote work and office attendance. In many cases, the office side of the hybrid will convert to shared desks, hot desking, and reservation systems since the full capacity of days gone by are not in our near future.

Employers are flailing for help to further alleviate their colleagues’ anxiety returning to potential Covid exposure. Despite the evidence of happy and productive remote workers, employers still want some of their people physically in the office some of the time for team collaboration, to greet customers, and other personal dynamics.

Will employees complain if they don’t feel protected? Between March and mid-July, more than 17,800 workplace complaints about COVID-19 have poured into the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, known as Cal/OSHA, had received some 3,800 complaints as of mid-July. That’s just one county.[3]

CDC Advice to Employers Returning Staff to The Office

The CDC advises employers and employees that must return to the office to, “Avoid using other employees’ phones, desks, offices, or other work tools and equipment, when possible. If you cannot avoid using someone else’s workstation, clean and disinfect before and after use.”

Other objects the CDC wants you to clean and disinfect include, “frequently touched objects and surfaces, like workstations, keyboards, telephones, handrails, and doorknobs. Dirty surfaces can be cleaned with soap and water before disinfection.[4]

The Importance of Safety Planning

Allen Smith implored HR leaders in his June 22^nd article published on SHRM’s website that in order to succeed at reducing employee fears, employers need to create and communicate a comprehensive plan to show their people in one place all the steps they are taking to keep them safe.

“Employers are taking steps to make their workplaces safe from COVID-19, but many aren’t pulling these actions together in a comprehensive plan. That’s a missed opportunity, as such plans can reduce workers’ fears about returning to worksites and defend employers from Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) penalties.”[5] Allen Smith.

What Can We Learn from Hospitals When Furnishing Office Space For Employee Safety?

Fortunately, healthcare professionals and manufacturers of hospital-grade furniture, fixtures, and equipment have left us a trail bread crumbs to follow. They’ve been designing and making products coated in materials that reduce the bacterial and viral load in order to minimize risk for years. Now, it’s time for leaders responsible for commercial spaces to follow this proven and well-worn path to a safer workplace.

By developing a comprehensive Covid risk-reduction plan for the office, employers can capture all of the things they’ve been providing so far, such as masks, hand sanitizer, temperature checks, planned spacing, and sneeze guards, and build upon that plan as more medical knowledge transfers into the commercial office space.

One of the largest examples of healthcare know-how trickling into office safety are antimicrobial desk tops. Healthcare facilities have been installing worksurfaces treated with silver ions to reduce harmful microbes from spreading from person-to surface-to person for a decade.

Savvy commercial office leaders are replacing their former laminate worksurfaces and PVC edge banding with seamless powder coat-painted desk tops. The old laminate tops with a PVC edge provide crevices where germs hide and live. By using worksurfaces with no edge band crevice where bacteria can hide from cleaning, coated with specially formulated silver ions that slowly release and protect the cured paint film from the growth of bacteria, we can protect the people and the furniture.  What looks like “dirt” on your worksurface could actually be bacteria in part, and it can damage coated surfaces. Using silver ions baked onto the powder coated worksurfaces, the protection from bacterial growth remains constant, even if the surface has been subjected to wear and exterior exposure.

Shared-desking scenarios will need to step up their protective efforts. Similar to the reason why I wear a mask to protect you, and you wear a mask to protect me, the desk needs its own “mask” of naked-to-the-eye silver ions that inhibit bacterial and viral growth.  And how can companies deploy contact-tracing software without taking this first, less-invasive, but more protective, step?

Silver is a registered pesticide with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which states that pesticides are used to prevent, destroy, repel or mitigate any pest ranging from insects and animals and weeds to microorganisms such as fungi, bacteria and viruses.

The EPA further states that “antibacterial” is limited to the treated surface and does not protect against disease-causing bacteria. The use of these products does not protect users of any such treated article or others against food-borne or disease-causing bacteria, viruses, germs or other disease-causing organisms.

Yet despite the EPA’s legal disclaimer above, silver antibacterial coatings have been used in restroom accessories, fitness equipment, building materials, lab equipment, air conditioning and air vents, and hospital-grade furniture, fixtures, and equipment for many years. Silver is a proven and trusted pesticide registered by the EPA, and the EPA has registered several materials with silver as the primary ingredient as antimicrobial.

When silver ion anti-bacterial powder coating was tested on Klebsiella pneumoniae and Staphylococcus aureus using the Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) Z 2801 test method, it reduced the bacterial load by more than 99% within 24 hours. The JIS Z 2801 test method is designed to quantitatively test the ability of hard surfaces to inhibit the growth of microorganisms or kill them, over a 24-hour period of contact. The JIS Z 2801 procedure has been adopted as an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) procedure, ISO 22196.

None of this antimicrobial protection matters if it prices the worksurfaces out of reach for employers. Fortunately, price comparisons show that powder-coated medium-density fiberboard desk tops treated with silver ions cost roughly the same as the old laminate worksurfaces. Any leader that walks their talk about “people being their most valuable asset,” and “we’re all in this together,” would surely agree that this is a small price to pay to alleviate employee fears, and do everything in their power to minimize health risks in their workplace. After all, it is one of the most basic human contracts: “You work hard for me, and I will provide compensation and a safe place to do that work.”

[1] Harvard Business Review. “How to Prepare Yourself for a Return to the Office.” Carucci, Ron, July 6, 2020. https://hbr.org/2020/07/how-to-prepare-yourself-for-a-return-to-the-office

[2] CBS News. “Half of American professionals afraid to return to the office because of COVID-19.” Cerullo, Megan, June 17, 2020. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/half-american-professionals-return-office-coronavirus-health-concerns/

[3] Los Angeles Times. “Workers fear returning to work. Many are resisting the call.” Roosevelt, M., Martin, H., Avery, T., July 23, 2020. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-07-23/la-fi-reopening-california-businesses-covid-19-fears

[4] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Coronavirus Disease 2019: Returning to Work.” Updated Aug. 25^th, 2020. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/returning-to-work.html

[5] The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). “COVID-19 Safety Plans Can Reduce Return-to-Workplace Fears.” Smith, Allen, June 22, 2020. https://www.shrm.org/ResourcesAndTools/legal-and-compliance/employment-law/Pages/coronavirus-safety-plans.aspx

Brian Carmody has been President of Right Height Manufacturing for 5-1/2 years and has worked in the  office furniture industry since 2003. Brian has written over 300 articles for About.com’s Medical Supplies website when it was owned by the NY Times. It is now owned by Dotdash and is called Verywellhealth.com.