COVID-19 Employee Incentivization, Safety & Communication. 

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As a food business, you are part of a critical infrastructure industry. This means that you, and your employees need to conduct operations to maintain the food supply (just as you did before the onset of COVID-19). This also means that while many of your employees’ families are staying home to shelter-in-place, your employees continue to maintain their standard workdays. Despite continuing to receive a paycheck, some employees might feel that they are being put in the “line of fire” without any additional incentives.

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As the outbreak continues, COVID-19 absenteeism will rise with increasing hot spots (see below or TAG's Daily Outbreak Tracking). How can you keep uninfected employees satisfied and on the job? What are other companies doing in this space to incentivize coming to work? Today, we discuss three primary best practices companies are implementing: financial incentives, “safety” controls, and communication.

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• Financial incentivization, although it may be the simplest solution, it may not be feasible. Despite this, some companies in both processing and retail have temporarily increased the pay for hourly workers who must come in. Many are also adding sick pay policies for workers who had previously not had the benefit. Realizing that workers are under higher stress – and potential for coronavirus infection – than those staying at home, businesses are seeking to provide some increased financial security for their workers.

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• Preventive safety controls, while slightly more difficult to implement, are even more essential to protecting employees necessary to the workplace. Key safety control points include: increased sanitation, worker wellness checks, keeping ill employees at home, separating workers who become ill during the day, staggering shift changes, and business-focused social distancing. (See TAG’s COVID-ID FAQ page for more information on each of these.) Some businesses are also erecting temporary barriers around workers where possible (e.g., retail cashiers, line workers, etc.), particularly where the six-foot physical distancing is not possible.

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• While financial incentives may help ease worker stress, and safety controls can reduce spread, communicating with your workers about your intent and actions will build rapport and help acknowledge not only that they are safer, but also that they feel safer. Creating a space of open communication can go a long way towards reducing absenteeism, and limit potential “walking off the job”. Explain your COVID-19 practices and policies to your workers; let them know the steps you have taken – along with why they were taken and how these steps are intended to help. Ensure employees know they will be covered if they do become infected. Most importantly, create dialogue with your employees by being open-minded and listening to  their fears and concerns so you can appropriately address them.

 

The COVID-19 outbreak has made several other communications just as critical, including informing employees and/or customers of a COVID-19 case in the workforce, general customer communication on preparedness, required reporting of a COVID-19 case, etc. As a part of its COVID-19 Toolkit, TAG has developed templates for each of these and other such communications. For more information, call TAG at 1-800-401-2239 or email info@achesongroup.com.