As employees return to offices from working at home, there are regulations and strategies that managers and heads of departments need to install to make sure the well-being of employees in workplaces. An office health protocol is a procedure that aids in managing the anticipation of work-related infections and injuries in the office. With the emergency of Covid -19 in 2019, the World Health Organization came up with protocols to be followed by organizations and companies to ensure smooth transactions of daily activities.
Even though there are stipulated protocols to be followed, employees are likely to neglect these protocols leading to the spread of diseases and injury in workplaces. Here are ways to make sure your employees follow your Health Protocol:-
1. Effective Training
An effective training strategy should be one of the first things your organization/company should consider. Training is a process of enhancing particular skills and knowledge for better productiveness. Your employees can not comply with your set of protocols if they are not aware of them, training them will help them understand the need for the protocols and how to go about them.
After training your employees, you are required to constantly assess your employees’ understanding of the health protocol by observing their daily work practice, this will aid in planning when to retrain or refresh. Retraining is needed when there is an introduction of a new set of health protocols or new equipment in the workplace.
2. Keeping an Open forum
Creating an open flow of communication in workplaces between staff and managers may increase awareness and raise safety concerns on the health protocols since employees are the first people to encounter risk before it reaches the management.
Having a regular meeting with your member of staff to discuss health protocol and issues that may arise, meetings may encourage them to share their thoughts and ideas on how the organization might improve health protocols that are set in place.
On the other hand, it is good to get first-hand information and understand the reason why some members of staff are not adhering to the set health protocols. This might be due to uncomfortable pieces of equipment brought in place or the protocols are obstacles in their workflow.
3. Writing Health Protocols down
An assumption is said to be the lowest knowledge level, but there is a next-lower level that is recalling what someone said or what we heard. Telling your members of staff about the health protocols set in place is way better than letting them guess them, on the flip side, expecting them to recall verbal instructions of policies and procedures given is kinda being over-optimistic.
So why document them? Because verbal instructions and reminders do not work. If you can not pinpoint the reason why staff members are not following your health protocols or procedures, the cause may be that they can not remember what you instructed them to do. When your health protocols are well written down in a manner that is easy to understand and that they can be easily accessible for all employees, a constant reminder is created reducing the chances of excuses
4. Reward staffs who follow Health Protocols
Acknowledging and rewarding employees is a great motivation in workplaces, recognizing simple acts like following Health protocols from employees rather than the ordinary acts of reaching target goals or going the extra mile may work as a reminder to staff to comply and follow Health protocols.
This should not mean that managers and supervisors only recognize the good employees who follow Health protocols, employees who do not follow laid health protocols should be summoned to since it’s their health that is at risk every time they are working. When you want employees to follow your health protocols it’s good to understand that a carrot will get a greater outcome than a stick.
