Query: covid and workplace

title: A special issue on the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic on work, worker, and workplace! Implications for HRD research and practices in time of crisis
abstract: On 20 March 2020, grasping with the seriousness of the pandemic, we, the editorial team of HRDI, decided to write a joint editorial. Joint editorial only happens for special occasions; the last tim.

title: National COVID 19 lockdown exit strategies need to pay more attention to community engagement and workplace safety
abstract: www.jogh.org doi: 10.7189/jogh.10.020323 1 December 2020 Vol. 10 No. 2 020323 The emergence of SARS CoV 2 in December 2019 has resulted in the unprecedented lockdown of over 4.5 billion people globally in an attempt to reduce virus transmission, infection and death rates, and to protect health care systems  However, with concerns mounting regarding the unintended health (eg, through disruption to immunisation programmes) societal (eg, mental health) and economic effects of lockdown, there is mounting pressure in many countries to relax lockdown measures  A clear decision making framework should guide these vitally important national/regional decisions.

title: Increases in Health Related Workplace Absenteeism Among Workers in Essential Critical Infrastructure Occupations During the COVID 19 Pandemic United States, March April 2020
abstract: During a pandemic, syndromic methods for monitoring illness outside of health care settings, such as tracking absenteeism trends in schools and workplaces, can be useful adjuncts to conventional disease reporting (1,2) Each month, CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) monitors the prevalence of health related workplace absenteeism among currently employed full time workers in the United States, overall and by demographic and occupational subgroups, using data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) This report describes trends in absenteeism during October 2019 April 2020, including March and April 2020, the period of rapidly accelerating transmission of SARS CoV 2, the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID 19) Overall, the prevalence of health related workplace absenteeism in March and April 2020 were similar to their 5 year baselines. However, compared with occupation specific baselines, absenteeism among workers in several occupational groups that define or contain essential critical infrastructure workforce+ categories was significantly higher than expected in April. Significant increases in absenteeism were observed in personal care and serviceSS (includes child care workers and personal care aides) healthcare supportP; and production* (includes meat, poultry, and fish processing workers) Although health related workplace absenteeism remained relatively unchanged or decreased in other groups, the increase in absenteeism among workers in occupational groups less able to avoid exposure to SARS CoV 2 (3) highlights the potential impact of COVID 19 on the essential critical infrastructure workforce because of the risks and concerns of occupational transmission of SARS CoV 2. More widespread and complete collection of occupational data in COVID 19 surveillance is required to fully understand workers' occupational risks and inform intervention strategies. Employers should follow available recommendations to protect workers' health.

title: Changing workplace geographies in the COVID 19 crisis
abstract: COVID 19 has fundamentally changed workplace geographies with large proportions of people working at home during the 'Great Lockdown' This commentary argues that working at home has emerged as a key policy response and one in which inequalities are embedded. We outline the nature of these social and spatial inequalities by examining existing evidence and data for the Global North, and consider some of the economic and policy challenges ahead.

title: Workplace responses to COVID 19 and their association with company size and industry in an early stage of the epidemic in Japan
abstract: The aim of the study was to investigate the number of workplace measures implemented to respond to the COVID 19 epidemic reported by employees and their association with company size and industry among employees in Japan  A cross sectional online questionnaire survey was conducted of full time employees in Japan from March 19 22, 2020 Questions were about announcements by the company of measures taken and 23 items of workplace measures Associations of company size and industry with the announcements and the number of workplace measures were analyzed  The final sample consisted of 1,379 respondents The mean number of implemented preventive measures for COVID 19 among 23 items was 11 2 (standard deviation, 5 9) Proportions of respondents who reported receiving announcement of measures taken was high (79 9% as were proportions of respondents reporting implementation of some of the workplace measures, while the less than half reported implementation of most of the workplace measures The announcement of measures and the number of workplace measures that were implemented in the workplace were generally lower/smaller among respondents in smaller companies and in retail, wholesale, and transportation industries  While most respondents reported receiving information about measures by their companies/organizations, it may be a further challenge to implement workplace measures in smaller companies and companies in retail, wholesale, and transportation industries

title: The Impact of Pandemic COVID 19 in Workplace
abstract: COVID 19 has become a huge worry for the Globe. The social and economic impact of COVID 19 pandemic will be far reaching and devastating for all. In this globally connected world, every country will get impacted by the devastation caused by the pandemic. The COVID 19 is likely to lead to certain permanent or long lasting. By the time, when the pandemic ends, we will probably see a new world, a new lexicon, a new social norm with far reaching economic and social destruction. When COVID 19 outbreak started spreading across the world, thousands of people started facing severe health issues and death rates increased. The only way to stop the spread of the pandemic was to stop all social and economic activities in the affected countries for indefinite period of time. This led many countries to impose complete lock down all across the globe which is still going on going on. In such a scenario all business activities, across all industries were completely stopped. The lockdown impacted various sectors in varied degree. For example, the airlines, hospitality, hotel, manufacturing industry is totally stopped and will take a long time to come out of this situation, if at all. Millions of people in these sectors are likely to lose jobs in these sectors. COVID 19 pandemic caused enormous disruption in businesses, which will take years to recover, if at all. The disruption is likely to lead to permanent shut down of many businesses, unable to bear the financial losses and disruptions caused by the pandemic. To get over the current situation, companies are trying to run offices and administration jobs through "Work from Home" mode. Companies are trying to cope up with economic turbulence caused due to COVID 19 through the usage of disruptive technology by working from home concept. Earlier work from home was an acceptable business practice only in IT and Technology sectors. However, other industry sectors were reluctant to adopt WFH as a good business practice. The biggest business change that we can see today, forced by the global spread the pandemic, is that many companies have been forced to implementing Work from Home mode for their employees. During the last 2 months, companies have found significant benefit in the WFH. Most companies, going forward, are looking at WFH as an integral business model. The WFH mode is helping some industries and functions in keeping its operations going, in a limited way. This research paper analyses the positives and negatives aspects of work from home concept as during this COVID 19 crisis, people working on WFH, are compelled to live in social isolation and emotional distancing. One can balance the responsibilities of work life domains, especially when life domain needs as much attention as to work, during these difficult times. The study has focused on the impact of COVID 19 virus pandemic on working life of employees. This research paper also emphasizes that how employers as well as HR managers are required to think out of the box and bring forth best practices as well as redefining HR roles during any adversity .This research paper will also give light on few important issues such as People Connect adoption of a system of Skilling, re skilling, Up skilling and multi skilling people about technology, design thinking, storytelling, analytics, Artificial intelligence to prepare our workforce to become more competent and talented by enhancing their skill set.  Work from Home, COVID 19, social distancing, lockdown, people connect, re skilling, multi skilling, up skilling, technology disruption.

title: Views on Workplace Policies and its Impact on Health Related Quality of Life During Coronavirus Disease (COVID 19) Pandemic: Cross Sectional Survey of Employees.
abstract: This study explored the degree of views towards supportive workplace policies among employees during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID 19) pandemic and its association with health related quality of life (HRQoL) in Hong Kong.  A cross sectional study was conducted in 1049 employees using online self administered questionnaire. Views on workplace policies were measured in term of agreement on its comprehensiveness, timeliness and transparency whereas HRQoL was measured using EQ 5D 5L Hong Kong version. Univariate estimates on the impact of HRQoL from views of measures in workplace was done. Qualitative comments on the suggestions to strengthen workplace measures were collected and presented descriptively.  Of 1048 respondents, 16% reported that no workplace measures nor guidelines were existed in their company related to the COVID 19 pandemics. Those who reported having workplace policy were not satisfied with the arrangement in term of comprehensiveness (36% timeliness (38% and transparency (63% Regarding to the policy measure, only 68% respondents reported that their workplace supplied face masks to them. The health index was 0897, which was lower than the norm of 0.924. 64% of respondents reported having a health problem in at least 1 of 5 dimension of EQ 5D 5L with the highest proportion of having problem in anxiety/depression (55% In addition, the workplace policy and measure had a direct effect of 0.131 on health outcome. Perception of infection risk had a direct effect of 0.218 on health outcome and partly mediated the relationship between workplace policy and measure and health outcome (0.066)  The study highlighted the workplace policy and measure is an important mean to minimize infection risk at workplace so as to reduce tremendous stress and health outcome caused by a COVID 19 pandemic. Workplace measures related to COVID 19 pandemic should be further strengthen to mitigate the risk of infection and protect employee's health.

title: Less social emergency departments: implementation of workplace contact reduction during COVID 19
abstract: The COVID 19 pandemic has led to rapid changes in community and healthcare delivery policies creating new and unique challenges to managing ED pandemic response efforts. One example is the practice of social distancing in the workplace as an internationally recommended non pharmaceutical intervention to reduce transmission. While attention has been focused on public health measures, healthcare workers cannot overlook the transmission risk they present to their colleagues and patients. Our network of three EDs are all high traffic areas for both patients and staff, which makes the limitation of close person to person contact particularly difficult to achieve. To design, implement and communicate contact reduction changes in the ED workplace, our COVID 19 task force formalised a set of multidisciplinary recommendations that enumerated concrete ways to reduce healthcare worker transmission to coworkers and to patients from ED patient arrival to discharge. We also addressed staff to staff contact reduction strategies when not performing direct patient care. We describe our conceptual approach and successful implementation of workplace distancing.

title: Staff rostering, split team arrangement, social distancing (physical distancing) and use of personal protective equipment to minimize risk of workplace transmission during the COVID 19 pandemic: A simulation study
abstract: The recent global survey promoted by the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (IFCC) Taskforce on COVID 19 (coronavirus disease 2019) described staff rostering and organization as significant operational challenges during the COVID 19 pandemic.  A discrete event simulation was used to explore the impact of different permutations of staff roster, including the number of shifts per day, the number of staff on duty per shift, overall number of staff accessible to work in the laboratory (i.e. overall staff pool) the frequency of shift changes (i.e. number of consecutive days worked) fixed work rest days and split team arrangement on workplace transmission of COVID 19 by a simulated index staff who acquired the infection from the community over 21 days. Additionally, the impact of workplace social distancing (physical distancing) and use of personal protective equipment (PPE) were investigated.  A higher rate of transmission was associated with smaller overall staff pool (expressed as multiples of the number of staff per shift) higher number of shifts per day, higher number of staff per shift, and longer consecutive days worked. Having fixed work rest arrangement did not significantly reduce the transmission rate unless the workplace outbreak was prolonged. Social distancing and PPE use significantly reduced the transmission rate.  Laboratories should consider organizing the staff into smaller teams/shift and reduce the number of consecutive days worked. Additionally, our observation aligns with the IFCC biosafety recommendation of monitoring staff health (to detect early infection) split team arrangement, workplace social distancing and use of PPE.

title: Structural Discrimination In COVID 19 Workplace Protections
abstract: Workers, who are being asked to risk their health by working outside their homes during the COVID 19 pandemic, need adequate hazard compensation, safe workplace conditions, and personal protective equipment (PPE) Sadly, this is not happening for many essential workers, such as those working in home health care and in the meat processing industry. These workers are not only being unnecessarily exposed to the virus, but they are also not receiving paid sick leave, unemployment benefits, and affordable health care and childcare. The lack of these protections is due to structural discrimination and has disproportionately disadvantaged women of color and low wage workers. This leaves them and their families more vulnerable to COVID 19 infection and death. In this context, structural discrimination refers to the ways in which laws are used to advantage those in power, while disadvantaging powerless workers. In the COVID 19 pandemic, the lack of legal protections for many workers is a reflection of structural discrimination.