What safety measures should you take when sending teams back to work? What can you do to prevent spreading germs in the workplace and keep your team safe?
Protecting workers during a pandemic will protect your clients from illness, too.
If you’re a cleaning business owner, using these safety precautions at work can be lifesaving.
Listen: Sending Teams Back Out
Watch: Sending Teams Back Out
Hey there, I’m Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question, and I get to help you find an answer. You can find this and 400 other answered questions in this series on our YouTube channel.
How Can You Send Your Teams Back Into the Work Field
What are your cleaning team precautions as you send your teams back into the work field after having stayed at home during the COVID-19 global pandemic?
Lots of house cleaners are asking us as we send our people back into the workforce, what should we be doing to ensure their health? This is a great question because it’s on everybody’s mind.
Create a System With Documentation
The first thing you need to do is create a system that has documentation attached. And for this, when your person shows up at the top of the day, you want them to be asked a series of questions on paper.
And the reason for it to be on paper is that they need to sign it at the end, and then that goes inside their employee file.
Now, whether you decide to do this electronically and start in an electronic Dropbox, or whether you do it on paper, it is entirely up to you.
You Have to Backtrack if Someone Gets COVID-19
But here’s the catch. If, for some reason your employees become infected with the COVID-19 virus, and right now the numbers are picking up, skyrocketing across the country after a recent stay at home mandates. The doors opened again, people started going back to business and the numbers started rising.
So, if your people catch it, you have to backtrack by law. You have to backtrack to find out who they were in touch with when they started having symptoms.
You Need to Know That Your Employees are Healthy
You do not want to be the one that says, “Well, we kind of think everyone was well and healthy when we sent them out.” No, you need to know, and it needs to be documented.
So, the first thing to do is to have a series of questions. The questions are going to include the symptoms from the COVID-19 scare. What this is, is, did you have any fever whatsoever?
And you’re going to take the temperatures of your employees before they go to work. It’s a great way to check, just to be sure.
Ask Your Employees Questions to Check
Ask questions like, have you lost any sense of smell or taste? Have you had any headaches? Any muscle fatigue? Have you been overly tired? Any chest pains? Have you had any cold or unexplained coughing?
And you go through a series of questions that they have to answer, and they have to sign off on. One of those questions is, have you knowingly been exposed to anyone with the coronavirus? Have you been around anyone connected to the coronavirus?
And if they answer yes, it could be someone in another state, but at least you know and it’s on paper. Now that said, when they sign it that goes inside of their documents inside their employee records every single day. Here’s the reason why.
Our Customers Want Proof That You’re Sending Safe Workers Out
Your customers want guaranteed proof that you are sending healthy people to them. And so if you say “I have on record seven days in a row where the person that’s coming to your house today has had no headaches, no symptoms.
They haven’t around anyone with this virus, we expect that they are well.” And then if they have had the virus, then you’ve got the whole entire quarantine process documented. That they stayed home for 14 days.
And if there was no fever or whatever, there were three days of no symptoms whatsoever on the tail end of their quarantine, you have all that stuff documented.
We Do Not Want to Put Our Customers in Harm’s Way
So that you’re not sending people out hoping because you do not want to put customers, in harm’s way. This is their family. It’s their pets. It’s their elder parents, their kids.
And if we are infected and come into their homes, we contaminate their homes and we make their homes sick. So, we want to make sure as employees, we are prepared.
You Need to Train Your Employees in Disinfectants
Now, another preparation we have to take is training in a certain series of disinfectants or sanitization products. And then we go to the grocery market and they are unavailable.
Our regular shippers right now are shipping to hospitals and care centers and they’re not shipping to professional house cleaners.
So, I’m like two months overdue on some of the products that we’ve ordered. So, you have to improvise and use the best products that you have based on what you know.
You Have to Learn About All Your Cleaning Products
What happens if you go to a market and you see that there’s another product that’s like the one that you’re using. Oh, goodness, you’ve got to start all over again. You got to learn the safety data sheet. You got to learn what you can use it on. Is it for porous or non-porous surfaces?
How long are you supposed to leave it on if you’re disinfecting or sanitizing? What are the rules for that particular product?
Part of the training that you have to do is you have to do impromptu training with your staff in the event that you have to improvise and come up with a different chemical solution.
Send Out an Email to Teach Employees About the Chemicals They are Using
So when people show up for the day, if they’re in a hurry and the chemicals have changed for the day, they should have been sent an email last night with all the info. With a breakdown, here’s how we’re supposed to use it, and as much training as you can possibly provide.
Because when they show up for work the next day, they don’t have time to learn it before they go on a job right then.
Part of Your Job is to Train Them
So, part of your job is to train them, and if the PPE changes, you have to inform them and educate them on the PPE that’s changed. So, there’s a lot of training and there’s a lot of stuff that has to be taken into consideration as you send people out into the new workforce.
And we’re calling it the new clean because the rules of cleaning have changed. So, you need to take it seriously, as far as how you run your business. Because as the business owner, you are liable for whatever happens while your people are on the clock.
The Rules of the Game Have Changed
This isn’t to scare you, but as we send workforces back into people’s homes, everyone needs to be aware, the rules of the game have changed.
You’re going to get to a customer’s house now and where they were gone before, they might still be home. They might still be home with nowhere to go. School is out for the summer. The kids are at home. The elder parents came into town because the family felt that even though they were healthy, they could better be watched at their home and cared for.
There are a whole bunch of new things that are happening, and so you have to be flexible, and you have to adapt, and you have to make that work.
So those are a few suggestions for you. Lots of training, lots of patience, lots of customer conversations so that there are no surprises.
Resources
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