Action: Contact your workplace
The above image was taken from a New York Times article on the potential end of open floor office plans. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/health/coronavirus-office-makeover.html.
Are you lucky enough to have a job? Is your place of work open or reopening? Advocate for yourself and your coworkers!
Find the people in your business responsible for your health and safety; then send them an email similar to the the one I’ve drafted below. I have used <angle brackets with italics> to indicate elements that you definitely need to customize. This letter is targeted for office workers whose day consists of desk work and meetings using whiteboards or PowerPoint presentations.
___________________
Dear <Reopening Team or Health and Safety team>,
I am concerned about the health of all employees at <Acme Corporation>. As you reopen offices, I ask that you implement aggressive policies and procedures to minimize the risk to everyone involved. Based on COVID-19 data and facts, here are suggestions that I have..
<Acme Corp’s> response to date.
<You might want to start by thanking your company for positive actions they have already taken, e.g. in terms of sick leave. Also consider commenting on how quickly or not the employer shutdown in March.>
COVID-19’s challenge. No warning and bad consequences.
Unfortunately, with COVID-19 everything is OK until, suddenly, it really isn’t. The world hasn’t had a massive pandemic since 1918, and we must re-learn how important prevention is. Just because our office has avoided any cases or transmission for 99 days does not mean that day 100 won’t result in a super-spreading event. Unless we are looking with a keen eye and in the right places, we will not have any warning about COVID-19 problems in the office until it is too late. I encourage you to look for warning signs before they reach <Acme Corp>, while making sure the office follows preventive recommendations, e.g. access to and use of masks and hand-sanitizer, distancing measures, and thorough office sanitation procedures.
Some actions <Acme Corp> can take.
Emphasize sick leave. When reading case reports (such as those linked below), I am continually struck by the number of times someone has felt sick and yet continued to attend a large gathering. It is impossible to over-communicated the message that "if you feel sick in any way, you should stay home." This is especially true because the list of COVID-19 symptoms is so broad and varied. Make sure employees don’t have to worry that they will use up their available sick leave. Also, you don’t want an employee staying home for three days during one month and then coming into the office sick the next month because they feel sheepish about the first absence.
Make sure getting tested is easy. People should have clear instructions on where and how they can be tested. People can have COVID-19 and be asymptomatic. Furthermore, symptoms can ease up and then come back with a vengeance. If people have any reason to think they need to be tested, make sure that it’s as easy as possible.
Let the degree of <Acme Corp’s> reopening be driven by external data, specifically COVID-19 case counts, hospitalizations, and deaths in your local county:
Distinctly downward trajectory? Continue to reopen step by step.
Upward trajectory? Consider further social distancing measures. Communicate the situation to employees so they can moderate their behavior in, and outside, the office.
Flat metrics? A much harder call. However, I would watch the local numbers closely in order to respond promptly, especially if they start to go up.
Make sure that your local data sources are high quality. Different office sites might have different levels of information available. For example, Santa Clara, CA has been on the cutting edge of publishing COVID-19 data. On the flip side, Georgia has done a poor job. Georgia’s reporting has conflated active virus (swab) tests with antibody (blood) tests, skewing the reported numbers in ways that make the data untrustworthy. Furthermore, they are not publishing hospitalizations at the county level. Where high quality local COVID-19 data isn’t available, the best alternative is data on excess deaths. It is much harder for a government to tweak death numbers than to under-test and/or not report hospitalizations. Unfortunately, both COVID-19 deaths and reports of excess deaths are significantly delayed (~2 weeks) behind COVID-19 infection trends.
Loosen workplace restrictions in stages, and no more than one change per month. The Bay Area and most of the country slammed on the social isolation brakes in mid-March, but it took two to three weeks before that drastic change became slightly visible in the caseload data. It was 4 to 5 weeks before the flattening trend was really clear. The reopening process is proceeding - rightly! - much more slowly than social isolation did. Due to ongoing distancing measures and awareness, a future uptick in cases will also be slower and more subtle than the initial flattening.
Know and clearly communicate specifics about why and how offices are being reopened. Personally, the most useful things about being in the office are the hallway conversations and the face to face meetings with a shared whiteboard. I will continue to be uncomfortable with these types of interactions for the next month or so, depending on trends. If these types of exchanges are not going to be available during the first stage of reopening, I may be more productive at home rather than at the office. Every individual and everyone in their management chain should know whether their physical presence in the office enhances productivity and why it is worth the risk of additional social interaction. <Either customize this paragraph completely or discuss your own job at this point. Decide for yourself what will be beneficial about physically going back to the office. Discuss whether it is worth the risk and/or how you might mitigate the risks.>
Move meetings and interactions outdoors. There are very few incidents where COVID-19 transmission has happened outdoors and even fewer super-spreading events. Finding reasonable ways to move interactions outdoors would make the workplace less risky, and I think these efforts would help people like myself feel more comfortable when back. For example, repurpose areas in the parking lots, both shaded and sunny, for people to be able to talk, hangout, and chat. Bring out some potted plants and picnic tables and maybe some portable tents.
Thank you for taking employee health and safety into consideration as you make your plans for reopening. Everyone’s actual risk and relationship with risk is different. Thank you for listening to my concerns and implementing policies that keep me and our coworkers safe.
<Your Name>
Resources
Discussion of some super-spreading events
https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/05/23/your-guide-how
COVID-19 tracking data tools
Searchable by California county. Displays hospitalizations. (Note the user options widget in the top left.)
http://currentpatterns.com/hospitalized/
Nationwide county searchable case tracking displaying cases and deaths on a county level.
https://www.phoenixdataproject.org/daily-county
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Help keep us safe by using your letter to push the COVID-19 response from the bottom up.
By educating your employer in the ways that they can keep you healthy you are also advocating for your broader community. Making sure that your employer has policies similar to those mentioned above help to limit the spread of COVID-19 even when offices have reopened.
We cannot expect our community’s COVID response to come only from the top down. San Francisco has done a decent job of building up its testing capacity, but much of that capacity is sitting unused. We need to prove that there is value in providing even more testing capacity. Pushing from the bottom, by encouraging businesses to make use of this testing capacity helps to keep us and our community safe.