Are you taking the right coronary measures in the workplace? Take the test with our tips and checklist

As an employer, how do you ensure a safe working environment that meets all the requirements? We have listed a few tips.

• Have your internal or external prevention department communicate the precautionary measures and specific agreements in your organisation.
• Provide employees with brief training on the coronavirus and inform them about prevention measures.
• Also inform external parties about the measures before they visit your company.
• Display the government's guidelines in a prominent place.
• Discuss with the occupational physician how you can provide extra protection for employees in the high-risk group (over 60s and employees with cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases or cancer).

• Do not shake hands with employees or external parties and always keep a distance of at least 1.5 metres.
• Don't take risks: ask employees with symptoms that point to covid-19 to stay at home and send employees with symptoms home and advise them to call their GP.
• Guarantee a safe distance not only at desks, but also in changing rooms and dining and meeting rooms. Avoid people sitting across from each other and enforce this by removing chairs.
• Also with organised transport to and from the workplace, make sure that the safe distance can always be respected. Provide fixed places.
• Cancel non-essential meetings, limit them in time or number of participants or organise them online via Skype, Teams or any other channel.
• Avoid using lifts. If this is not possible, limit the number of people using the lift at the same time (e.g. allow only one person in a smaller lift), keep a distance, wear a mouth mask and stand back to back.

• Did an employee go home due to illness? Have his or her workplace thoroughly disinfected.
• Provide clean toilets. Provide sufficient soap (preferably in dispensers) and rolls of tissue paper. Display the instructionsfor proper hand washing. Download the poster for good hand hygienehere.
• Have the cleaning service clean everything regularly and thoroughly, paying particular attention to handles, knobs and other surfaces that are frequently touched. Ask employees to clean shared work equipment (telephones, printers, safety helmets, etc.) after use.
• Ensure that all rooms are adequately ventilated. Ask employees to clean and ventilateshared areas - such as dining and meeting rooms - after each use. You have good air quality when the CO2 in the air is below 800ppm. Read more about it on our poster.
• Clean and ventilate the vehicle regularly.  Ensure a supply of fresh air by opening windows.

If, during the corona crisis, you work with a smaller team than usual, you can draw up a business continuity plan. In it, you list possible actions and communications with which you can maintain your service and protect the health of your employees.

Download our manual for a business continuity plan.

The Federal Public Service Employment, Labour and Social Dialogue has drawn up a checklist to enable you to check whether you comply with the necessary precautions.If you can answer 'yes' to all questions, you are fully prepared for a possible inspection.

You can download the latest version of the checklist via werk.belgie.be (look for 'checklist prevention COVID-19').