Even in days long before COVID-19, managing employee health, staffing and a safe workplace has always been a challenge. In any normal week you may have had staff out with everything from a common cold to the flu or more serious medical conditions. Managing their status and return to work dates, along with workflow around those dates, can be an HR nightmare.
Now in the pandemic age, employers are thrown a new curve with needs for a protocol specifically relating to COVID-19 exposure, contagion windows, recovery and re-introduction into the workplace. You can easily spend all your free time simply trying to manage all the moving parts.
Snapp and Associates is now offering its clients access to the proprietary Cleared 4 Work platform to help streamline the process. Cleared 4 Work is a HIPAA-compliant symptom checker and compliance tool being used nationwide at the highest level of local, state and federal government agencies, along with numerous large private sector employers.
How does it work?
The Cleared 4 Work platform uses integrated technology to query employees regarding their COVID-19 symptoms and risk factors on a regular basis, usually in 90 seconds or less. Employers can then track employee conditions in real time and send secure messages and follow up instructions depending on regulatory needs. Possible outbreaks can be addressed in real time to address staffing needs, restrict access and ensure employee/visitor safety.
What about beyond screening?
In addition to monitoring your employees’ health on a regular basis, the COVID-19 crisis has also led to a need for contact tracing in the workplace and beyond. If a potential outbreak is detected, you must determine who else may be exposed — including external contacts, contractors and even family members. The Cleared 4 Work platform integrates full contact tracing functionality, allowing managers to monitor the status of all potentially exposed groups and their respective statuses.
I want to (or am required to) implement regular COVID-19 testing for my business – How do I manage that?
The last thing you want to spend your time doing is policing employees, making sure they are getting tested as required and reporting results. Using a streamlined platform like Cleared 4 Work, managers and owners can quickly review all employees’ testing status, anyone flagged as overdue and/or incomplete and instantly send a text or reminder to complete their testing before they are next at the worksite.
An automated solution also helps ensure that employees have received an ‘all clear’ result within CDC guideline timeframes before returning to work. Not only does this data give you peace of mind, it further helps mitigate your liability exposure as you are requiring employees to verify clear test results before returning to work.
What about vaccinations?
Employer mandates for vaccination is an individual decision; some owners are requiring vaccination as a term of employment (much like a required drug screen, etc.), others are strongly encouraging it and/or offering various incentives to employees to complete their vaccination.
If you collect and automate employee data on vaccination status using a platform like Cleared 4 Work, you can quickly determine your overall employee vulnerability and track trends as more and more individuals become vaccinated. Employees also will have the knowledge that you (the employer) are taking vaccination tracking seriously and working to create a healthy as possible workplace.
What’s the bottom line?
With a constantly changing minefield of COVID-19 regulations and requirements, you need to ensure you are following all protocols and successfully mitigating risk wherever possible. Outsourcing the entire tracking, testing, vaccination and data analysis process to an expert third party will allow you to spend more time on day to day business operations while still ensuring you are in full compliance with OSHA and CDC guidelines every step of the way.
