Workplaces become Covid-19 Hotspots

Peter du ToitI'm the founder of FutureWork IQ where I spend my time assisting businesses to design digital workplaces or “offices in the cloud.” These environments enable companies to allow flexible and remote working for their teams. I also teach the digital literacy, fluency, communication and collaboration skills needed to work in these modern technology-rich workplaces.

If you are thinking of requiring staff, who can work from home, to come into the office when lockdown levels open up your business sector, I would strongly recommend that you reconsider this and rather allow them to continue to work from home.

This is the governments recommendation anyway.

South Africa has seen a spate of infections in the workplace. 3 grocery stores and a factory in the Western Cape have been responsible for 200 infections! And a store in Boksburg experienced 24 staff infections. All these places had to be shut down and staff put into quarantine severely disrupting operations.

This illustrates two things:

1) The virus is very infections and will slip through any lapse in protocol infecting groups of people rapidly.
2) To keep the infection out of your workplace is going to take a monumental attention to detail. Hand hygiene, premises sterilization, physical distancing between people and the wearing of masks.

If your staff are working from home you will avoid all this.