Yesterday, the authorities were saying that, for Nigerian businesses and schools, “the current situation in the country does not warrant a shutdown of daily activities.” Today, however, federal and state governments are shutting down schools and banning congregations of 50 persons and above. If your office or shop must remain open, here are a dozen basic precautions that emphasize and expand on what the Nigeria Centre for Diseases Control (NCDC) has so far advised to protect workers, clients and visitors. This advisory is really about three things:

  1. Provide staff with info they need to protect themselves (1 & 2)
  2. Consider letting everyone work from home (where possible) and
  3. Put safeguards and relax some rules if they must come to work

1. Create a single line of communication on the disease

If you run a company or an organization with 10 employees or more, consider nominating a trusted staff to serve as the head of a Monitoring and Communication Team (MCT) whose responsibility would be to produce a constant stream of information that helps workers deal with needless anxiety. This team will be the go-to person for questions on the virus. The HR or the PR manager are best suited for this role. You could also use a digital Group Chat devoted solely to the subject and encourage employees to post only vital and useful information there.


2. Provide official documents on the virus for everyone

Knowledge is power. The more people know about the disease and how to take personal precautionary measures, the better it is for the population to be spared the agony of having the disease spread rapidly. NCDC recommends that businesses circulate the NCDC public health advisory and related materials for businesses to all employees, clients, and visitors. For schools, it is also advised that NCDC’s public health advisory and related materials on COVID-19 for schools are provided to all staff, students and parents.


3. Work from home, where possible

If the business of your company is such that employees could work from home, it is prudent to develop a process for remote tasks to be done and then direct everyone to self-isolate for a given period of time. This will obviously cost your company a tidy sum to pay for the cost of keeping in touch. Consider buying into one of the creative new services available (e.g. eMobile), to ensure that your organisation does not spend a fortune to keep in touch if the staff are working from home. If a case of Covid-19 were to be uncovered in the city where you do business, it is imperative that you do this. Check out the flyer attached here, as one of the options to consider.

Click here to join Enugu Business Network and enjoy free calls

4. Mount handwashing station at office entrance

NCDC has advised that businesses should continue to emphasize to their workers the importance of hand washing. The most consistent advice from health experts and organisations is that individuals should wash their hands with running water. Any business that wants to be proactive should consider installing a handwashing station in front of the office, a plastic container with plastic or metal tap which is constantly filled with water. No one needs to tell visitors to each building to do the needful before they enter your offices. This is also not new. It was routine practice in homes and offices during the Ebola threat, which we all appear to have forgotten.


5. Ensure office taps are running

This may look like an obvious precaution to take but many small offices take the issue of sanitation for granted. Rather than install overhead tanks and connect them to the toilets, they would rather buy plastic or tin drums, fill them with water and provide bowls and buckets for those who use the toilets. Should the virus fully enter into Nigeria, this will become a dangerous gamble and a needless exposure of the workers to real danger of contracting the virus.


6. Provide handwashing tools for workers

Soap should be provided at the WCs for anyone who wants to wash their hands, preferably liquid soap that can be pumped out, rather than tablets that everyone will be forced to touch each time they wash. Each office should also have a hand sanitizer at the entrance for the person who has washed hands to rub before entering offices.


7. Kit cleaners to deep clean offices

It is time to kit the cleaners with the equipment they need to ensure that they deep clean the offices before any other person arrives. It may also be necessary to run each office like a typical hospital, where cleaners go around to clean with antiseptics every two hours. NCDC advises that offices focus on routine cleaning of high contact areas such as toilets, door handles, telephones, etc.


8. Restrict office visitors if you can

If it is possible to transact business remotely, it might be necessary to restrict visits to the office for those who do not need to come in. That way, you will reduce the chances of a stray visitor bringing the virus to your workplace.

If you will put up a notice, make it clear that you are only restricting the same group that the authorities are advising to stay home, and that the measure is for the security of the workers.


9. Rationalise local travel for your workers

You could carry out every precaution in the book but if one employee travels and comes in contact with the virus, he will definitely bring it back to the office on his return, and you wont know until days later when he or she begins to manifest the symptoms. It is good to err on the side of caution and rationalize all travels to only the essential ones.

10. Relax Office Resumption Time

In the same way, if your employees do not have to come to the office before 8.00 a.m., it makes sense to ask some of them who come by public transport to come late to work so as to avoid the mad rush in the morning and packed buses that will present a danger not only to them but also to other office staff in the event that they catch the virus in a bus.

11. Advise those who are unwell to stay home

Encourage employees and students to stay at home if they are unwell. It is better for them to keep social distance from the rest of the pack until they get well.

12. Restrict non-essential international travel

If local travels are rationalized, it makes sense to outrightly cancel all international travels, unless they cannot be helped. Nigeria has been lucky so far. Keep in mind, however, that confirmed cases of coronavirus in Nigeria came from someone who returned from an international travel. Both the East and West are high-risk areas right now and so there is need to think twice before approving for anyone to travel overseas.

Author

If you love this, click a button below to share the knowledge