Operational Guidance

How should employers ensure that their employees are healthy when they return to the office every day? While fast, frequent, and reliable testing is an ideal component of a comprehensive return to the office plan, most businesses do not have access or can not afford testing. Based on a review of the latest research, our scientific experts recommend how employees should be screened daily and answer common questions, such as: should employers be temperature testing, is smell testing reliable, and how to handle the management of this complex process. 

What’s the role of employers in the COVID-19 vaccine? With several promising candidates nearing completion of Phase 3 trials, a COVID-19 vaccine may become available in the next few months. Despite a lack of long-term safety and efficacy data, a COVID-19 vaccine is likely to be recommended to the general population sometime after it is approved. When this occurs, employers in office-based business will want to be informed on what their role will be in response to guidance from public health authorities and government agencies. In this report, we provide evidence-based and expert-vetted recommendations for employers so they can implement policies that conform to public health guidance while protecting the health and safety of their workers.

How should employers make sure they have a comprehensive and effective response plan for when an employee contracts COVID-19? While infection prevention and control are standard for some settings like healthcare and food service, the coronavirus pandemic means employers in all sectors must develop effective response plans to maintain a safe workplace. Our experts have summarized regulatory guidance and the scientific literature to bring you recommendations for common questions such as: what happens if an employee becomes sick at work, how should my company respond to someone learning that they were exposed to a case, and how do we communicate these plans to our employees.

COVID-19-specific health protocols are essential for employees to more safely return to work, but can be challenging to follow. As employers require their employees to wear masks, maintain physical distance, report symptoms, and adopt other new behaviors, how do they ensure employees comply? How should employers respond when they don't? Drawing on social and behavioral science, our experts recommend immediately actionable strategies and tactics to shape employee behavior and increase compliance with COVID-19 health and safety protocols. 

COVID-19 transmission has been proven to occur more easily in poorly-ventilated indoor spaces, where the virus can linger in the air for hours. Employers need to ensure that they have adequate HVAC and airflow policies to decrease the probability of disease transmission. Combining the latest in scientific research on the disease with tried and true HVAC and airflow policies, this report will provide employers with strategies on how to lower the probability of transmission in the workplace. These strategies will range from those that can easily be done with little cost to those that are more sophisticated and labor intensive, but all will tangibly increase airflow and decrease the likelihood that employees transmit the virus to their colleagues.