As we start to open up businesses and slowly return to work, employers have been left to figure out how to track employee health and wellness. Most of the public health authorities across the country are asking employers to put health and safety measures in place that include safety instructions and personal protective equipment (PPE) for employees. They are also asking employers to put measures in place to track employee health and wellness.
Most large employers have some of these measures in place already but many are left scrambling to implement or update how they track employee health and wellness. To help you navigate these changes a little easier, we've assembled a few best practices for tracking employee health and wellness during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Implement a Survey or Questionnaire
Public health authorities are asking employers to have their employees complete a simple questionnaire every time they show up for work. Here's an example from the Ottawa Board of Health that was adapted from Toronto.
We'd consider this the baseline for what information you should be collecting in terms of health and wellness because the public health questionnaires focus only on COVID-19. We recommend you include a few additional questions to measure how concerned your employees are about going into work and how they feel about being at work.
Getting this type of data consistently over time will be critical to your ability to manage and adjust your response to reopening.
Get Employees to Respond BEFORE They Arrive
Depending on how your workplace is configured, having employees complete a survey or questionnaire once they get to work could pose additional risks. Ensure employees are responding before they arrive on site. Set up a place outside or have them complete your survey or questionnaire at home before they leave for work.
If you use a digital survey platform, they can complete on their phone or on the web from home. You can make it easier for them and reduce the risk to your workplace because then nobody has to handle any paperwork.
Integrate with Internal Systems
For workplaces with large number of employees or workplaces that run on rotating shifts, we recommend that you look to integrate your survey with internal systems like payroll, scheduling or keycard scanning system. Done right, you can use these integrations to ensure everyone is presented with the survey or questionnaire before every shift and complete it.
Create a Plan for Identifying Issues and Reacting Quickly
What happens if an employee isn't feeling well, indicates that on their survey and goes home to isolate. Do you have a plan for identifying this and responding quickly? Do you know who inside your organization gets notified, when and how? What if your employees start showing signs of stress related to their return to work? Think through the different scenarios you might encounter and develop plans for them.
If you're thinking about implementing a digital solution to track employee health and wellness, look into automated reporting and notifications so that you can have management notified immediately when something important happens or something changes in the health and wellness of your employees. Automated emails that are triggered when responses come in or numbers start to change are a great place to start.
Conclusion
The implementation of changes to how you track employee health and wellness can appear to be simple on the surface but get complex once you start working through the details. Of course, everything is complicated by the uncertainty of the situation around COVID-19, but having a system in place to track employee health and wellness is now more important than ever.
If you're interested in implementing an employee self-assessment survey, contact us today and we can set up a demo of a platform that we're offering. We can get you up and running in a matter of days.
