Wednesday’s podcast guest will be Formetco Safety Director Jim Poage.  Jim will talk about OSHA and out of home.   During the interview Jim also reviewed what an out of home company should do to keep employees covid-safe.  We’re running his covid comments today.

What steps should an out of home company take to keep employees safe during covid?

A lot of the things outlined by the CDC such as social distancing, wearing a mask, staying away from public events, which are kind of common sense stuff…If you’ve attended one of my training sessions in the last five years one of the things I’ve always been an advocate of is handwashing.  I felt like it was critical when trying to prevent the spread of the flu…So when COVID19 came out I kind of smiled that proper handwashing was the first step to prevent the spread of the virus…At Formetco we went from large work groups to split shifts and smaller work groups so we could isolate personnel if someone were to become infected…We offer masks for people during the day.  We implemented a viral protection policy which makes sure that people…are keeping a suitable distance, tours and office visits are suspended, and we have many office and sales employees officing from home…The other thing we’ve done which is kind of controversial is we’ve set up a thermal image scanner to take people’s temperatures whenever they come into the building and we measure any extreme temperature changes that would indicate they have a fever…

Does working from home create safety complications?

It can.  I did some research on the OSHA website and discovered that up until year 2000 OSHA had the ability to come and do an investigation on your home office…They revised it in 2000 and will only visit home operations where manufacturing or assembly is taking place…But my question has been “What about people that work from home that come down with COVID19?” OSHA is requiring employers to record on their 300 logs employees who contract/come down with COVID19 if it occurs in the workplace.  What if your workplace is your home and the virus is contracted from a family member at home?   Also, I’ve inquired about workers comp coverage for employees working from home.  Based on these concerns, I’ve been encouraging people to involve their insurance company when having employees work from home to make sure they have proper coverage.

Any Formetco employees get covid?

So far, none have been reported…We do have a policy that anyone who has COVID will be quarantined at home until they can get two negatives tests and a release from a doctor before they return.

[wpforms id=”9787″]

Paid Advertisement