The Noggin Blog

After months of disruption, organizations are eager to return to normal as part of the recovery lifecycle. For many, that means resuming operations in work facilities vacated due to local, state, and national lockdown orders.

With the spread of the coronavirus, the health and safety of our workers is back in the news. Indeed, frontline workers, especially healthcare professionals, have become the faces of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic – their heroism matched only by the level of safety risk they court to do their jobs, with data sources showing a disproportionate number of healthcare workers among those infected with the coronavirus.

Frontline workers, especially healthcare professionals, have become the faces of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In areas hard hit by the rapid spread of the coronavirus, like Lombardy, New York City, and New Orleans, stories of the noble sacrifices of healthcare workers who have had to risk their personal safety to treat patients without an adequate stock of personal protective equipment (PPE) have proliferated – incomplete data sources point to at least 5,400 healthcare workers COVID-19 infections in the U.S. alone, with dozens of deaths.

The COVID-19 public health crisis is rapidly changing the way we do work. And safety regulators aren’t staying on the sidelines.

As major shifts occur in the workplace, safety regulators are issuing new recommendations and descriptions of mandatory safety and health standards. For PCBUs, the question remains, though: will your safety software adjust to the changes?

Why’s a place of mass gathering so difficult to pin down, even for owners and operators? The answer is more complex than you’d think. For one, place of mass gathering is a risk designation, extrinsic to the core function of the venue. Qualifying a venue as a place of mass gathering is its (high) potential to inspire terrorist attacks, which it becomes by concentrating large numbers of people.

With a surge of coronavirus cases around the world, new reports of workplace closures due to fear of exposure are emerging outside of coronavirus-epicenter, China, and outbreak hotspots like Hong Kong, South Korea, and Italy.

The risk of the novel coronavirus to global supply chains is significant, experts say. And it’s easy to see why. For one, there is no historical precedent for the potential impact of the coronavirus on increasingly complex, global supply chains.

For PCBUs (Persons Conducting a Business or Undertaking), maintaining a safe workplace has never been more important – if you don’t do it, your competitor will. For, as the data shows, firms are increasingly leveraging effective safety management protocols to gain an advantage in the market.

Protecting places of mass gathering means controlling risk. Safety and security risk, however, can come from virtually any aspect of the operation, a daunting prospect for venue owners and operators. And that risk tends to increase – not shrink – as the size and complexity of the operation grows.

Hiring employees to perform remote and isolated work often helps businesses improve their productivity. But lone work isn’t without operational risk. For one, managing the safety risk to lone worker populations is part and parcel of a PCBU’s (Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking) duty of care obligation.