Building a Covid safety toolkit

Covid-19 is here to stay - at least for the medium term - and that means we need to create processes and systems to enable us to operate our charities safely and without being overburdened.

One way to do that is to create a Covid safety toolkit, really a “living with Covid” approach to be applied by charity employers in the running of their operations. This is would be a software package of tools that will help you keep track of the changes and the ever-increasing regulation and actions you need to stay on top of.

For example, such a toolkit, and ideally it would be online, would help charity managers work through what’s needed and how to action it. It should provide a checklist, training and sample documentation. Although creating a toolkit may sound overwhelming, the good news is that none of these activities is new; they simply need to be used for the current situation.

Creating a toolkit

Building a toolkit is as simple as LEGO. Rather than creating individual processes and lots of standalone documents, you bring together, all in one place, every item you will need to respond to Covid.

For example, certain text could be created for multiple use, so it can be used on your website, in work manuals, in notices in the workplace, treatment areas or compliance documents.

Covid affects all parts of an organisation and requirements change rapidly. Imagine if you had to check and update them all, one at a time. The chances of missing one or keeping out of date information is quite high and the task is daunting.

That’s where a toolkit can help, and why it’s important for your charity to have one (whether you create it yourself or buy it in) and ensure everything you need is in one place.

Contents of a toolkit

A charity’s Covid safety toolkit should contain:

1. A governance framework.
2. Risk management including individual and group risk assessments.
3. Action plans.
4. Communications plans.
5. A review and update plan.

It sounds extremely dry so let’s make it more user friendly:

GOVERNANCE. You need to decide who is in charge: who has oversight of all your Covid vulnerable activities; where does the buck stop? Many months into Covid, this has probably been done ages ago, so you might as well put it into your Covid Policy and make sure everyone knows it.

RISK MANAGEMENT. This is all the changes, adaptations and new ways of working you put in place in response to Covid, and hopefully you shouldn’t need to do them over again. If these are risk assessment based and clearly documented (a simple excel sheet will do - the key is clarity, not length. You can quickly check what needs updating if there is a local or national change in guidelines.

Most of your arrangements can probably stay as they are, but do you know which ones need to change and how? If your original assessment is at hand, in an easy-to-access document, you can revise it very quickly.

You may need to assess an individual person’s risks as well. For example, somebody who has recently had Covid will need different kinds of support than someone who has never had it, or someone who lives with an elderly relative.

Better understanding

Our general understanding of risks relating to specific groups - young people, healthcare workers, etc. - is much better than earlier in the pandemic and is constantly improving. You might want to fine-tune your risk groups at regular intervals. Again, this is where having a central document will save you time.

ACTION PLANS. This needs little explanation; it goes hand in hand with your risk assessment changes. If there’s been no change then no action is needed. If there has been a specific change in risk, then you’ll need to change the mitigation that helps reduce that risk.

If you do this by modules or sections for each area of your charity, each building or physical space or field of activity, you will be able make the changes much faster and you can also check that you haven’t missed anything.

A COMMUNICATONS PLAN. This is where Covid specific planning pays a lot of dividends. It is worth dedicating some time to this as it’s the area that is likely to change most often. Make sure you understand the different groups that you need to communicate with and listen to them actively.

Use templates

Also be very clear on what you want to say, and say as simply and straightforwardly as you can. Use templates where you can so that you can send out updates quickly and easily. And of course, make all communications timely using trusted sources of information such as the government websites.

Covid awareness/protection is essential. Your staff must feel that however government restrictions operate now and in the future Covid has been taken into account by your charity as their employer. That is why your communications plan is a vital part of your toolkit.

REVIEW AND UPDATE. There is no magic here; you simply need to check, and check again, at regular intervals what the current regulations are, and what you and your staff are required to do. You’ll also need to have evidence that you are carrying out your duties as an employer.

TOOLS TO HELP YOU. Fortunately, there are a couple of tricks and tips you can use. These are not new, they are probably already familiar to you, and in Covid-19 vulnerable activities they are essential:

• In electronic communications (websites, newsletters, chats, etc.) use links directly to the relevant government websites.
• Use shared file systems (e.g. Google Drive, One Drive or Dropbox) for templates and drafts.
• Have a log of where these templates are kept and where they are used, to make sure you don’t miss one of them.
• It takes an extra few minutes to get everything in one place when you start, but it will pay dividends many times over when you suddenly need to change something.

Supporting your staff

At the moment the whole burden of Covid protection (including ascertaining the disease) is undertaken by government through its regulations, but charity employers need to build into their employee wellbeing programmes additional support. This means for example, offering the facility of private testing, as is happening already with some commercial firms, or coordinating the use by your employees of free lateral flow tests supplied by the government.

But there are also the mental and other wellbeing aspects which need to be addressed. (This is no different from commercial firms pre-Covid offering all sorts of support outside the NHS, e.g. counselling, extra support after illness or accident, etc.)

So, charity employers should develop their own Covid support strategies, building and then adding to support systems. These will need to cater for the specific characteristics of charities, e.g. physical contact charities (care homes or day centres or when field workers are calling on people in their homes) will have different issues from charities just offering helplines or digital contact or research or grants.

It’s easy to get Covid-weariness and when that happens, we sometimes take our eye off the ball - it’s just human. But it’s another reason why a toolkit is essential. No doubt you already have a lot to contend with to keep your staff and clients/patients safe, and your charity running, so don’t give yourself extra work. Having a toolkit that means you don’t have to repeat work, or “reinvent the wheel” or worry that everything is up to date. It’s one less layer of stress on your shoulders.