We know that reopening is on your mind, and we want to continue to provide useful resources to guide your decisions. In June we hosted a Return to Work webinar and wrote a Washington State Reopens blogpost, which still have relevant information. Now, we are pleased to share two new tools: our Safety & Health in Nonprofits COVID-19 Workplace Safety Checklist and COVID-19 Workplace Safety Sample Policy. We hope these tools help your nonprofit assess your readiness for workers, clients, and visitors to return to the workplace as well as support your organization in creating a COVID-19 safety policy that works for your team and is in compliance with Washington Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) requirements.
A few things to consider with these and other COVID-19 safety resources:
- Set the expectation with your workers and clients that your procedures will change in accordance with local, state, and federal guidance and regulations. Conditions are changing regularly so staying safe requires adjusting our behaviors and workplace policies. COVID-19 updates from L&I can be found here.
- Make it easy for workers to follow guidelines. Put up signs to clearly state expectations and policies.
- Provide cloth face coverings or a more protective mask to workers, free of charge, when use of a mask is required. (This is required by L&I.)
- Add COVID-19 workplace safety as a regular topic of discussion at your safety committee or safety meeting.
- Where appropriate for your organization, create opportunities for worker input and discussion around the policies, guidelines, or practices you plan to implement.
Here are a couple other resources to support your journey back to the workplace including Washington Nonprofits own mandatory vaccine policy.
- Washington Nonprofits mandatory vaccine policy
- COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates: Policies, Procedures, and Unemployment (publication by Equifax)
We recognize the virulence and spread of the Delta variant was discouraging and raised the level of uncertainty again. We are committed to providing the best information we can to help you decide how to adapt and meet your mission in spite of difficult circumstances.
Funding and support for this project has been provided by the State of Washington, Department of Labor & Industries, Safety & Health Investment Projects. In addition, we appreciate the contributions and inputs of 501 Commons as we created these new tools (see 501 Common’s Resources for Returning to the Workplace).
