Late last week, OSHA issued a new guide for businesses returning to work. This new guide is intended to be a supplement to OSHA’s previously released Guidance on Preparing Workplaces for COVID-19. It doesn’t provide any new recommended practices but rather has examples of how employers can incorporate OSHA recommended practices for COVID-19 control and prevention into their return to work plans.
The guide details the following areas that reopening plans should address:
- Hazard assessment: including determining when, where and how workers are likely to be exposed to the coronavirus in the course of their job duties.
- Hygiene: including hand hygiene, respiratory etiquette, and cleaning and disinfection.
- Social distancing: practices for ensuring ways to maintain distance between workers, customers and visitors, using 6 feet as a rule of thumb.
- Identification and isolation of sick employees: including isolating and excluding employees with signs or symptoms of COVID-19 and employee self-monitoring.
- Return to work after illness or exposure processes: including after workers recover from COVID-19 or complete their self-quarantine after exposure.
- Controls: including engineering and administrative controls, safe work practices, and personal protective equipment selected as a result of an employer’s hazard assessment.
- Workplace flexibilities: including telework and sick leave.
- Training: including the signs, symptoms and risk factors associated with COVID-19, where exposure may occur, and how to prevent the spread of the virus.
- Anti-retaliation: including practices for ensuring that no adverse or retaliatory action is taken against an employee who raises workplace safety and health concerns.