Safe & Well Workplace Services
Ready to open your workplace? Mercy Occupational Medicine is here for you.
Mercy Urgent Care and Mercy Occupational Medicine provide a wide range of services to fit your workplace needs. From facility walkthroughs to N95 mask fitting tests, to daily temperature and symptom screenings conducted by one of our medical professionals, we’re ready to help you assure your workplace is safe and well.
Contact Mercy Occupational Medicine for more information on setting up a Safe & Well Workplace program: 828.254.7576
As you adjust to your “new normal” in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, and adapt policies and processes to protect your employees, we are here to help you every step of the way. Ensuring your workforce is a safe place for your employees to return to work is personal to us. Why? Because we’re all in this together. Because you’re our community, our neighbors, our friends, our family. Because your business is an integral part of our local economy.
Identify Infection Control Hazards
Prior to reopening your business, put yourself in the shoes of an employee or visitor. Perform a physical walk-through, looking for all the places where infection control hazards exist. Identify high-risk areas, such as cafeterias, breakrooms, or restrooms. Once you’ve identified these areas, create and implement policies and processes to minimize and/or eliminate infection risks. Here are are some policy suggestions for cleaning and social distancing within the workplace.
Cleaning Policies
- Display hand washing and infection control posters prominently throughout your facility that detail the proper handwashing process. Place hand sanitizer at multiple stations throughout the building. Encourage frequent hand washing.
- Instruct employees to avoid touching their faces, sneeze and/or cough into a tissue or elbow, and eliminate handshakes.
- Train staff on proper donning and doffing of protective equipment such as masks and gloves.
- Intensify cleaning efforts across the organization. Have EPA-registered disinfectant cleaners readily available and conveniently located. Encourage employees to disinfect surfaces in their vicinity throughout their shifts.
- Implement a cleaning protocol and schedule to ensure common areas and frequently touched surfaces are disinfected multiple times throughout the day.
- Remind staff to disinfect personal electronic devices regularly.
Social Distancing Policies
- Screen all visitors and employees for COVID-19 symptoms daily, before entering the facility and before the start of each shift.
- Require all employees and visitors to remain six feet apart and wear a mask at all times. Post signage reminding employees of both protocols.
- Ban all non-essential visitors.
- Where social distancing isn’t possible, consider fit testing for N 95 masks and erecting physical barriers or partitions between employee work stations.
- Where possible, close break rooms, cafeterias, or other common areas to minimize congregating in close quarters.
- Modify policy to restrict all unnecessary business travel, including making “rounds” to multiple facilities, or any travel that increases infection risk that isn’t essential to business operations.
- Restrict in-person meetings by limiting capacity and providing technology to conduct virtual meetings where possible.
- Continue telework arrangements where possible, to limit the number of people physically present in the workplace.
- Establish processes for receiving mail and other regular deliveries.
- Mark one-way traffic in hallways and stairways to help maintain social distancing.
- Avoid sharing equipment where possible—particularly phones, desks, and other work equipment.
- Modify schedules to reduce the number of employees in the building at one time. Consider staggered shifts, breaks, and meal times.
Create an Exposure and Return to Work Protocol
Establish a plan for employees who have been exposed to someone who tested positive for COVID-19, or who test positive for COVID-19. The plan should include process and parameters for employee returning to work, as well as protocols for employees who were in close contact with the exposed employee.
Mercy Occupational Medicine is here to help. Contact us today to set up your Safe & Well Workplace protocols and procedures. 828.254.7576
Related Links & Resources
Information regarding COVID-19
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