Your Key to Enforce Social Distancing

While the COVID-19 pandemic has not come to a close, a new normal is taking hold as businesses figure out how to keep moving while taking steps to mitigate the spread of the virus.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) continues to provide recommendations to help businesses provide safe, healthy work environments. Personal protective equipment (PPE) like face coverings, plastic barriers, hand sanitizing stations and face coverings all play an important role to reduce the spread.

But according to the CDC, the best way to reduce the spread of COVID-19 is limiting close face-to-face contact – or as it commonly appears in mainstream parlance, social distancing.

Also called “physical distancing” by the CDC, social distancing means keeping a safe space – currently defined as at least 6 feet – between individuals from different households. The rationale for the practice is rooted in how the virus spreads. When an infected person coughs, sneezes or talks, droplets can get in the air and spread COVID-19 to people nearby.

The challenge businesses face is twofold. First, how can companies facilitate effective social distancing throughout the organization? Second, what can they do in the event an employee tests positive?