Covid-19 | Back to Office Checklist

Checklists help being back to the office

During the Corona pandemic, many employees with office jobs work in their home offices. Currently, many companies are faced with the decision: when will the employees return to the office on site? What protective measures must be implemented? How do I prepare the offices or the office building for the new situation?

Many questions that are answered and points that must be considered. Checklists can be used in which all necessary measures and work are recorded so that the responsible persons do not lose the overview and do not implement protective measures. In this way, it is clear to everyone which points have already been completed, which ones are in progress and which ones still have to be implemented.

This article informs about the following topics:

1. Measures before the reopening of an office

2. Measures after returning to the office

3. Advantages of checklists for returning to the office

4. A digital solution for checklists

Measures before the reopening of an office

Before re-opening an office, companies should know whether local and state regulations for resuming operations during the pandemic can be complied with. Once it is certain that the office can resume operations, the following should be considered:

• The responsible personnel must develop a safety, intervention and control plan that helps to achieve:
• Carry out a risk assessment and identify areas and work tasks where employees are exposed to Covid-19.
• Identify which employees are most at risk from COVID-19.
• Pay attention to factors outside the workplace that expose employees to risk, such as the type of transport used to get to work.
• Use control measures that minimize or eliminate risks for employees. The control measures may be administrative measures, such as the introduction of staggered break schedules, which help to minimize crowding in common areas.
• Employees must be informed about the steps the company is taking to mitigate Covid-19 in the workplace. Measures include hand hygiene, staying at home in case of illness, wearing masks or other suitable personal protective equipment (PPE), and health checks.
• Employees must be educated about how Covid-19 can be transmitted and how everyone can prevent its spread inside and outside the office.
• Offices that have been completely closed for a longer time must take the risk of legionnaires' disease into account. Measures to reduce this health risk should be considered.

Measures for the reopening of the offices

The steps communicated to employees for protection against Covid-19 at the workplace must be implemented visibly in the office building and in everyday office life. Besides, the following measures promote compliance with the guidelines in the office:

• Put signs at the building entrances to remind people entering the offices of Covid-19's main risks and controls.
• Put up signs in the sanitary rooms to remind people to use proper hand hygiene.
• Place visible adhesive tape markings on the floor or other visual cues to remind employees of the 1.5-meter distance rule when physical barriers are not possible.
• Provide training on respiratory etiquette and remind employees to be considerate of their colleagues during this pandemic (conflict management)
• Implement a regulation for the case that an employee falls ill and has to stay at home. In this case, the home office rules can be reinstated to maintain the productivity of the company.
• Inform employees about the necessary cleaning of the workplace. Cleaning personnel should wear PPE and use disinfectant cleaners, especially when cleaning and disinfecting frequently touched surfaces.
• Internal control to promote compliance with office policies.

Advantages of checklists for reopening

Returning to the office in Corona involves many measures. Companies are striving to resume normal office operations while at the same time dealing with the health risks caused by the pandemic. The monitoring of the implementation of the measures is important to protect the workplace, but also the employees' environment, from Covid-19.

Checklists for returning to the office in Corona times help company management and facility managers to meet the special requirements. This creates safe and productive offices despite the corona crisis. With checklists, all those who are involved, always keep an overview of the tasks that have been done and those that are still open, which significantly reduces the susceptibility to errors. If problems occur, responsible employees can react faster because they have the information immediately. Besides, information on the status of work can be exchanged more easily with checklists.

Our checklist templates take into account the latest best practices, but only provide basic information and must be adapted to local conditions. Each company must also check that the use of such checklists in their offices is permissible and practicable.

Use mobile app for office checklists

In many companies, office inspections and other checks are still carried out with paper checklists. A procedure which brings some pitfalls with it. A major problem is above all the loss of information and the delayed exchange of information. A mobile app with desktop software can help here.

Lumiform's mobile app enables any quality and safety inspection to be easily performed using a tablet or smartphone - online or offline. The desktop software is used to create checklists for returning to the office and later analyze the collected data. This significantly reduces the risk of quality losses, infections, documentation errors and damage to reputation.

Advantages of the mobile app for returning to the office during and after Corona at a glance:

• The flexible form construction kit makes it possible to convert any individual paper list into a digital checklist within a few minutes.
• Generate real-time data via internal processes. This makes quality and security measurable and allows processes to be continuously optimized based on data.
• Keeping track of everything that's going on in the field.
• Reports are created automatically - this saves the complete postprocessing.
• Improve the efficiency of internal processes: Through better communication within the team, with third parties and with management, and faster incident reporting, incidents are reported up to 4x faster than before.

To make it easier for companies and their employees to return to the office in Corona, we have compiled some templates for checklists that are needed. All templates can be easily adapted to your requirements and regional specifications of state authorities.