Question: What are the steps needed to keep employees safe at the office?

Answer passage (source: UK):
page_title: Guidance Staying safe outside your home
section_headers: When at work, follow the advice given to you by your employer
section_content: Employers have a duty to assess and manage risks to your safety in the
workplace. The government has issued guidance for employers and businesses on
coronavirus. This includes guidance on how to make adjustments to
your workplace to help you maintain social distancing.
It also includes guidance on hygiene, as evidence suggests that the virus can
exist for up to 72 hours on surfaces. Therefore, frequent cleaning is
particularly important for communal surfaces like:

door handles
lift buttons
communal areas like bathrooms
kitchens
tea points

You can see the guidance for employers and businesses on
coronavirus on gov.uk and can ask your employer if you have
questions.

Reviewer feedback on this answer:
Has some safety information for employers with links to more detailed guidelines.
This is not a direct answer to the question. This answer provides website link to government issued guidance for employers and business to assess and manage risks in the workplace and to manage social distancing.

Reviewer ratings:
Excellent
Acceptable

Answer passage (source: UK):
page_title: Offices and contact centres
section_headers: 1. Thinking about risk
1.1 Managing risk
section_content: Objective: To reduce risk to the lowest reasonably practicable level by taking
preventative measures, in order of priority.
Employers have a duty to reduce workplace risk to the lowest reasonably
practicable level by taking preventative measures. Employers must work with
any other employers or contractors sharing the workplace so that everybody’s
health and safety is protected.
In the context of COVID-19 this means working through these steps in order:


In every workplace, increasing the frequency of handwashing and surface cleaning.


Businesses and workplaces should make every reasonable effort to enable working from home as a first option. Where working from home is not possible, workplaces should make every reasonable effort to comply with the social distancing guidelines set out by the government (keeping people 2m apart wherever possible).


Where the social distancing guidelines cannot be followed in full, in relation to a particular activity, businesses should consider whether that activity needs to continue for the business to operate, and, if so, take all the mitigating actions possible to reduce the risk of transmission between their staff.   


Further mitigating actions include:  
– increasing the frequency of hand washing and surface cleaning
– keeping the activity time involved as short as possible
– using screens or barriers to separate people from each other
– using back-to-back or side-to-side working (rather than face-to-face)
whenever possible
– reducing the number of people each person has contact with by using ‘fixed
teams or partnering’ (so each person works with only a few others)

Finally, if people must work face-to-face for a sustained period with more than a small group of fixed partners, then you will need to assess whether the activity can safely go ahead. No one is obliged to work in an unsafe work environment.   

In your assessment you should have particular regard to whether the people
doing the work are especially vulnerable to COVID-19.
The recommendations in the rest of this document are ones you should consider
as you go through this process. You could also consider any advice that has
been produced specifically for your sector, for example by trade associations
or trades unions.
If you have not already done so, you should carry out an assessment of the
risks posed by COVID-19 in your workplace as soon as possible. If you are
currently operating, you are likely to have gone through a lot of this
thinking already. We recommend that you use this document to identify any
further improvements you should make.
*[COVID-19]: coronavirus

Reviewer feedback on this answer:
Has detailed information about what employers should do to keep their workers safe during the pandemic.
This is a direct answer to the question. This answer provides information on what steps can be taken to keep employees safe at the office and to reduce workplace risk to the lowest reasonably practicable level.

Reviewer ratings:
Excellent
Excellent

Answer passage (source: UK):
page_title: Guidance Staying safe outside your home
section_headers: Reduce the number of people you spend time with in a work setting
section_content: You can lower the risks of transmission in the workplace by reducing the
number of people you come into contact with regularly, where you can. Your
employer can support with this (where practical) by:

changing shift patterns and rotas to match you with the same team each time
splitting people into smaller, contained teams


Reviewer feedback on this answer:
Has brief but relevant information about policies to make workplaces safer.
This does not answer the question. The question is asking for information on steps to keep employees safe at the office, and this answer provides information on how employee can lower the risk of Covid-19 transmission in the workplace and how their employer can help support them to do so.

Reviewer ratings:
Acceptable
Bad