The global COVID-19 pandemic poses a significant and evolving challenge for employers. The humanitarian cost is vast and economic impact to business may be devastating. Most companies are now in the crisis recovery phase, so taking a strategic approach to making the enterprise more resilient will help it survive and ramp back up sustainably. Whether you are continuing to operate or are restarting operations, you need to implement and maintain a program that will ensure business continuity and the health and safety of employees.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN TO YOUR BUSINESS?
To address the biological hazards brought by the SARS-CoV-2 virus you need to understand the risks and provide assurance to employees and other stakeholders. Boards of Directors and regulators will be seeking assurance and verification that health and safety management strategies are in place and effective in controlling the risks. Determining protective measures should include a science- and risk-based approach to assessing biological hazards and identifying appropriate controls. This will ensure resources are applied where the risk of employee exposure, resulting health and business impacts are greatest.
HOW CAN WE HELP?
As a leader in the health and safety field, we have learned that building the capacity of your staff and taking a team approach is the best way to prepare your organization to manage through this crisis. We can provide your organization with the safety, occupational and public health management know-how to recover from this crisis, get back up and running, continue business operations and protect your valued employees.
We have developed a disciplined, documented and science-based approach to engage your staff, equip them to recognize the threats to your business, and empower them to take swift and assured action before virus transmission in the workplace escalates into work refusals, major disruptions or closure orders.
“VIRTUAL” COVID-19 RISK ASSESSMENT
We have created a service offering to help clients develop a more effective risk management approach to COVID-19. Using a facilitated (online) workshop we assist your staff in performing bio-safety risk assessments to analyze potential hazardous situations and threats to business operations and continuity during this pandemic. The service is delivered in two phases.
Phase 1: “COVID-19 Training
A two-hour, live (online) webinar to help your staff understand:
1. The COVID-19 Pandemic – Current pandemic situation, what we know about the virus, impacts of the virus on people, implications for businesses and health and safety precautions.
2. Biosafety Fundamentals – Basics of infectious agents, their hazards, routes of transmission, decontamination/disinfection, common measures to prevent exposure and COVID-19 disease.
3. Risk Assessment Fundamentals – Conducting risk assessments following ISO 31000, assessing biological and occupational health exposures, ascertaining risk tolerance, identifying risk treatment and controls.
4. Bio-Safety Risk Assessment Tool – Using the simple Excel spreadsheet Tool to identify hazardous situations/scenarios associated with specific jobs/positions, analyzing severity, exposure and probability, evaluating risk, identifying and determining job -specific treatment and controls to reduce risk.
Phase 2: “Virtual” Risk Assessment Workshop
We lead and facilitate virtual risk assessments (online) using the Tool to analyze and evaluate the severity (impact on health and safety), frequency of exposure to the virus and probability of occurrence of selected scenarios. The Tool considers existing controls (engineering, administrative, human/behavioural), scores the risk and compares it to risk criteria. This enables the team to identify additional, targeted preventative and protective measures or actions that can be implemented to further reduce or mitigate risks to the business.
Contact us: [email protected]