CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC — An awake to healthy work environment in Nigeria
Undoubtedly, the pandemic has revealed the excesses in our work space and consequently, the need for upgrade in various jurisdictions.
My work experience has availed me the opportunity to visit several offices in Lagos and a couple of others within the country. I can boldly affirm to you that many of these work arenas are health time bombs waiting to explode. For instance, dusty carpets that are only cleaned once a day, too overcrowded work tables, bad or no extractor fans in rest rooms and not to mention, poor ventilation.
With the pandemic ravaging the global economy presently and with the recent ease of lock-down recently announced by the Federal government of Nigeria, there is actually a major need of creating a healthy work environment for everyone. While everyone is waiting for things to get back to normal, I tell you, this is a new phase.
Based on this, we have to come to the reality that the Corona virus endemic, Covid-19 is still very much around and with the persisting mutation of this virus, a potent vaccine is currently not feasible at the moment.
As we battle to beat the current pandemic as a nation, the general welfare of the masses should be greatly considered without neglecting our work environment.
According to Harvard, building laboratory research actually proposed nine (9) areas. This article focuses on four basic hygiene means; Ventilation, Safety and security, disinfecting of surface and also Personal and protective equipment. Improving on these areas with collective effort will definitely help in combating the dreadful disease as well as enhance productivity in various work fields.
The exposure of the world to the pandemic has given us reasons to take measures on improving hygiene at our workplaces.
While the World health Organization, W.H.O and other relevant health bodies have advised on the importance of personal hygiene and social distancing, Organizations and institutions are meant to come up with strategic ways of sanitizing and implementing social distancing in the environment at this point in time.
According to CDC and Nigeria center for disease control, NCDC, constant hand sanitizing is mostly recommended as ways of avoiding the virus. So, by placing hand sanitizers in strategic locations, it will encourage employees and visitors to always practice self-hygiene and in turn promote a healthy work place.
VENTILATION
Ventilation is the intentional introduction of air into a space; it can be natural through openings like windows or mechanical through Air conditioners etc.
There are offices with no proper natural ventilation and poor mechanical ventilation with no means of automating the process.
A poor ventilation design can affect the quality of air flow. A dusty or moist office affects staff breathing and causes loss of productivity with bad health in general.
Ventilation is important in a building to help in circulation of fresh air at all time. It helps moderate the temperature of a space, reduce the build up of moisture, odors and other gases during occupied periods.
Due to the way our environment is built with so much noise from horns to people and external factors, lots of building designs have to focus more on mechanical means of ventilation.
With mechanical form of ventilation system, it is best advised we introduce the automation system to help make the process seamless and efficient.
Having sensors in work space to help regulate the temperature at all time, Co2 sensors to give the Co2 concentration of the office at every given time and also knowing the humidity of the work space and also introduction of dehumidifiers. Investing in these areas will help ventilation system perform optimally and you also able to generate data for future best practices.
Creating a work space with proper spacing and less people congestion will be the new normal.
SAFETY AND SECURITY
At this point we have to also start looking at our safety and security measures that we have in our work places.
We need to gradually start overhauling most of the current systems in most of our offices in Nigeria as they are not fit for the new normal.
Going by our current system of operation where most of our office doors will have to be pushed before it opens, thereby making every one that comes in or out to have contact with that same handle that might actually be a carrier of virus.
With a research carried out by CBS, it reveals that within two to four hours, a virus placed on a doorknob was picked up by 40–60 percent of workers and visitors within the facility.
With this new normal, we are forced to start thinking of new innovative ways to handle our safety and security issues in such a way that will foster healthy cultures, unless you are ready to risk lives and possibly assets.
As we can all agree, it saves a lot to prevent an outbreak than to search for remedies after damages have been done.
With these new innovations and ways to better office health culture, it is best organizations start focusing on new technologies that offices can easily deploy to help in flattening the curve and also promoting healthy work environment in general.
There are now smart CCTV cameras that can be deployed to facility entry points to help detect temperatures and subsequently grant access to staff, this technology will reduce number of sick people gaining access to the facility with proper checks. These latest trend of CCTV can go as far as being integrated into your automation system to help in peoples counting, temperature readings, facial detection, and also monitoring. Investing on these new trends will help in safe guarding and also promoting a healthy work space.
There will also be a shift from conventional fingerprint scanners to retina (face scanners) and also the use of cards.
Access control technology will mostly move into facial recognition to avoid contacts of surfaces as we will be moving towards contact-less systems, Elevators will also be moved to card and possibly voice commands.
DISINFECTING OF SURFACES
As we work on improving our ventilation and security systems, there is also a high need to work on our surface areas. Having a system that can easily disinfect surfaces and offices should be a top priority in our work space. There are solutions that can easily be deployed to your work environment that can also help in automating these processes.
Cafeterias, food courts, and break rooms. Two sensitive hot-spots in an office are the break room and kitchen, and if food is consumed with germ-ridden hands, it’s easy to digest the germs and become infected with several diseases. Although hand sanitizer is not a replacement for hand washing, it can help eliminate certain germs in these areas. We also need to the introduction of contact-less sinks, toilet flushes
Employee desks, phones, computer keyboards, and computer mice are key germ transfer points because people touch them so often. Considering that employees spend the majority of their day at their desks where they also eat, drink, and even cough and sneeze, desks can become a hot-spot for germs to reside. Placing individual hand sanitizers at desks keeps hand hygiene within reach and also regular disinfectants.
In addition, having an enhanced disinfectant process that clearly spells out timing, location and retraining of cleaners/staff is mandatory.
PREVENTIVE AND PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT
The usage of PPEs cannot be over empathized at this point. Offices should make it mandatory and also provide for staff and visitors. There is need to always wear the recommended Nose Mask at all time.
We also need to communicate to you that there is no zero risk of contracting the virus. As we intend to start re-populating our work environment we should have in mind that the goal is to minimize risk and we can get there by following layered down precautions.
I will also like to add that, there is no one way strategy to beat this virus but if we intentionally put these measures in place in order to have a better work environment and together we will survive the pandemic.
Three ties to life — your health, your mission, and the people you love. Very important!
Writer,
Bright Sorgwe,
Project Engineer at Chrema Technologies.
