In addition to the detailed sector guides above the Government has also issued five overarching steps that it requires all businesses to take to ensure they are working safely during the coronavirus pandemic. These are:
1. Carry out a COVID-19 risk assessment. This can be completed by businesses themselves, but there are also risk assessors you can commission to complete the assessment for you. If carry out your own risk assessment the HSE recommend you should consider the following;
- Identify what work activity or situations might cause transmission of the virus
- Think about who could be at risk
- Decide how likely it is that someone could be exposed
- Act to remove the activity or situation, or if this isn’t possible, control the risk.
2. Develop cleaning, hand washing and hygiene procedures. This can include the provision of more hand washing and hand sanitising areas within your business. In addition to more places for staff, customers and visitors to wash and sanitise their hands, more intense and frequent cleaning processes are also shown to reduce the spread of infection.
3. Help people to work from home. The ability for you to accommodate home working will clearly vary hugely from business to business, but where you can, the advice is to make provision for home working. This in turn will also help with maintaining social distancing in your workplace because if 20% of the team can complete their work from home, it will make it easier for those who have to complete their job at work to do so whilst maintaining a social distance from others.
4. Maintain a 2 metre social distance, when possible. Clear signage will play a key role in ensuring everyone knows the rules and new systems in place. One-way systems, demarcation of the space showing clearly where a 2m distance is, visitors by appointment only and staggered starting and finishing times will all help.
5. Where you cannot maintain 2m distance, put other measures in place to reduce transmission risk. Ask yourself if the task in question is essential and needs to be completed in the way you currently do. If it is, can you reduce the time it takes? Can you put in place back to back or side to side working, where transmission risk may be reduced? Can you put screens in place to physically separate people even if they are not 2m apart? Are you able to keep individual teams fixed so that you are reducing the number of different people your team members will have contact with?
Bespoke Social Distancing Screens for the Workplace
At GH Display we have developed the largest range of social distancing screens in the UK. We have a large stock of clear acrylic and a skilled team who can turn around orders in a quick timeframe. We are manufacturing perspex screens for desks and counters as well as designing and making more complex screens for schools and businesses alike. Below are some of the screens we have manufactured bespoke to customer requirements.