Billions in employer COVID-19 safety spending isn’t buying worker confidence, study says
Three out of four workers say they aren’t confident about COVID-19 return to work measures.
Employers are spending nearly $3.4 billion per month to prepare their workplaces for employees to return.
But this massive investment in the aggregate (but only $61.23 per employee) has not allayed the fears of two-thirds of workers that returning could endanger their health and safety, according to a new study by Huma, a company providing digital biomarkers, digital therapeutics and remote patient monitoring technologies to the health care industry.
Three out of four workers told the researchers they aren’t confident about COVID-19 return to work measures.
Related: 5 things to consider if an employee refuses to return to work
“What this research identifies are the concerns of employers and employees in managing health and safety at the workplace during the COVID-19 era,” Dan Vahdat, founder and CEO of Huma said. ”Without new solutions to help manage workplace safety, businesses and the economy are going to take longer to recover.”
Driving employees’ concerns are interactions with other people. Coworker hygiene (17%) and commuters (25%) among the biggest worries, according to the report. Even with these fears, 52% of employees say they are ready to stop working remotely. Of employees who have returned, only one in four are confident of the measures to ensure their safety and wellbeing.
From the employer side of the ledger, roughly three out of every five said they will be able to accommodate employees in their pre-COVID-19 workspaces by the end of September.
Approximately four out five employers told Huma they haven’t updated sick leave policies in the wake of the pandemic or plans for communicating exposure to the illness.
To ease employee fears, Huma said there needs to be much more assiduous monitoring of the health of employees and improving communications to enhance and maintain confidence. “(Employees) stress they want employers to prioritize communications of incidences where there may be an increased risk of virus transmission,” Huma said.
Two out of three workers said they are willing to do a daily symptom check with their employers and 75% said they would be comfortable with employers tracking their symptoms. The findings based on an August survey of 5,000 employees and 2,000 companies with workforces between one and 249.
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