#LearningConnects: Employers talk about the delicate trade off between easing off on the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions and safeguarding health and safety
To help ETF partner countries deal with learning under lockdown, we've been having conversations with people dealing day-to-day with the restrictions affecting the world of work and education during the COVID-19 crisis.
On May 5, we talked to two employer representatives and an EU health and safety specialist to gauge how we can return to work as several countries around the world gradually begin to ease back on restrictions that have lasted in some cases for months.
Akustina Morni, an advisor at the IoE, the International Organisation of Employers, which represents directly and indirectly 50 million companies globally via its affiliation with more than 150 employer organisations, has a century of experience in dealing with issues that challenge businesses and their workers.
Geneva-based Akustina, who is from Brunei, says that moving out of quarantine lockdowns, while desperately needed by vast majority of companies, would be challenging.
Many industries were facing huge difficulties in returning to anything approaching normal, she believes.
"Tourism and the hospitality industry, aviation and commercial travel are on hold and we are seeing a lot of bankruptcies coming up. Oil and gas are badly affected and for those countries that are producing oil and gas - the Middle East and Central Asia - this is a real shock," she says
"Anything related to non-essential goods are heavily affected, as are SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises) that make up the majority of companies in developing countries - and even in countries like Switzerland, 90 percent of companies are of this kind. The informal sector, which accounts for some 60-80 percent of employment particularly in countries in Africa and Asia are also acutely affected."
That picture is also reflected in Lebanon, where Talal Hijazi, General Manager, Association of Lebanese Industrialists, said that outside of essential industries such as agriculture and food processing, or cosmetics factories now producing hand sanitizer and detergents, "all sectors are affected."
Financially the situation was becoming more pressing with supply lines under great pressure, he adds.
"We now have inflation and financial problems, with the dollar rate increasing. Most industrialists need to buy raw materials and we must buy it in foreign currencies."
The government was beginning to introduce sector-by-sector re-opening for business, but with rules that include 30 per cent occupancy rates in factories, social distancing and the provision of protective gear and tracking systems to ensure compliance by employees, the economic cost of the pandemic lockdown measures would not be over soon.
"The government has a good business continuity contingency plan and our association is participating in implementing this, but our dilemma is that we do not know the timeline. Without a vaccine there is no definite solution."
William Cockburn, head of the Prevention and Research Unit at EU-OSHA, the EU agency for Safety and Health at Work, acknowledges the challenges businesses face.
Set up as an information agency 25 years ago, EU-OSHA researches and disseminates the latest information and best practice about health and safety in the workplace, working closely with the EC, EU governments, trades unions and employer organisations. Its experience in this field - for example it recently ran one of the largest campaigns in the world about dangerous substances in the workplace, and will soon launch one on muscular-skeletal disorders - means that is have been tasked by the European Commission to publish guidance on COVID-19.
For companies seeking to get their business up and running again, "the first step is to carry out a risk assessment revisiting their existing risk assessment and analysing how their work is done and what aspects of that could give rise to risks of transmission of COVID 19," William says.
Broader aspects should also be taken into account, such as the prevalence of infections in a country or region, as well as site or job specific factors, including the extent to which the work brings employees into contact with one another, clients or the public. Decisions should be made on limiting opportunities for the virus to spread before any thought is given to personal protective equipment, he stresses.
"There will be other challenges too, dealing with a workforce that may have been in confinement, like in Spain, for more than a month, and which is understandably anxious about going back to work.
"Employers may have to address factor such as whether people have been ill, or members of their family, whether they still have children at home. "
Lebanese employers have already started dividing roles during the pandemic, Talal says. His association, for example, already split its team between those that could work from home via computer - accounting and statistics, for example - and others that needed to be at the office. That sort of divide has been copied throughout industry and may continue as pandemic restrictions are eased, but could not work for all, he says.
"Working remotely is part of the solution. But we have to make sure that all sectors will open smoothly because we cannot keep everything at home, at the end there is a supply chain and the economic sector should work."
Akustina says her association has been consulting widely and holding several videoconferences every week to formulate clear guidance for a return to a semblance of normality.
"We ask our members to always seek advice from employer organisations that can provide concrete step-by-step advice and have also devised a five part back to work guide ourselves."
The guide states that employers should look at how to implement a safe return to work, including coping with the psychological after effects of lockdown.
They should look at how to sustain the right working culture post-COVID-19 and how to embrace the realities of the new working environment, including looking at digitising some services. And ways in which the provision of services and products may have to be changed in the post-crisis worlds must be examined.
"The first thing to is to safeguard our lives and livelihoods," Akustina adds. "Health management must be assessed in balance with the economic damage that equally impacts people's wellbeing; global coordination is important - this is a time for sharing scientific findings, it is not about competition between countries.
"Businesses that have yet to embrace technology must do so now. Governments must look at investing to help digitalise infrastructure. For every dollar invested in this, four dollars are returned."
William agrees that reviewing how a business is physically structured is essential.
"We hear a lot about PPE, but less about the simple steps that should be taken to ensure physical distancing, placing barriers between workers, co-workers, clients and the public. That may need some imagination - making use of new spaces, perhaps part of the canteen can be used?"
Employers should also be vigilant to the emergence of COVID-19 symptoms, and needed to "drill home the message about hygiene and washing hands regularly", which was more important than "gloves or surgical masks."
Care also needs to be taken around addressing the needs of employees with health conditions that could make them more vulnerable to infection, particularly when these may be confidential medical details.
Links to more than 250 sources of information, including sector-specific guidance, were available vial the EU-OHSA website, he added.
Watch the full conversation here.
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