Return to the New Normal; How fostering an entrepreneurial workforce is a necessary aspect of returning to work during the COVID-19 pandemic

Authors: Charles Golub – Market Development Manager Saint-Gobain Medical Components

                 Dr. Julia DiCorleto – Saint-Gobain Research North America Center Director

Finding a new work normal is a challenge for both employees and companies.  The framework of the hierarchy of controls (https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/hierarchy/default.html) provides some reference for how to mitigate risks such as a virus, but it doesn’t give the updated picture needed for today’s requirements.  In helping to facilitate a safe return to work, companies must also consider many uncertain risk factors.  Each step of the hierarchy can help to guide the proper policies companies should instill, but further actions may be required to ensure a safe return to office.  Saint-Gobain Research North America, one of Saint-Gobain’s largest research & development centers, employs over 300 researchers and engineers across a diverse campus that includes laboratory space and open-concept offices.  The center has done an impressive job of outlining safe return to work steps and instituting procedures that ensure sustainable and safe office practices.  To understand more about what steps were taken to safely bring the staff back to office, we sat down with Dr. Julia DiCorleto, the director of Saint-Gobain Research North America.

Your employees are your biggest asset, so ensuring they are comfortable in their work atmosphere is critical to their return to work.  Organizing cross-functional teams within the organization is one way to ensure people’s concerns are being heard in a constructive manner.  “At Saint-Gobain Research North America, we assembled a team from many different business units and job competences to look into “the new normal”, Julia mentioned, adding that the center executive committee had reviewed guidelines from the, CDC, and local and federal governments. “The guidelines set forth by these agencies were used to create the outline of engineering and administrative controls.  Then, the “new normal” team was tasked with taking these guidances and implementing a tangible action plan to eventually bringing the full staff back to office. This engages multiple levels of the organization into being active in the safety and wellbeing of their fellow coworkers.”

The culture of the workplace needs to be enabling of an entrepreneurial spirit to help foster a safety culture in the current environment.  The R&D center not only has resources, but also resourceful people that used available technology, such as 3D printers and injection molding machines, to quickly make face coverings that were distributed to the workforce. “We were early adopters to require face coverings at all times while indoors,” says Julia. They had a team of engineers quickly identify a design and start molding comfortable face coverings within weeks of the pandemic reaching the region, which was greatly helpful at the time when administrative controls such as face coverings were not widely available since they were being used as PPE in hospitals. 

You may find your employees have some creative ideas that could help the overall health and safety of the workplace.  At the R&D center a variety of teams work under the same roof on a wide variety of projects with a broad range of technical expertise from analytical chemistry to application specific knowledge for given business’ needs. While working with different groups sharing a single location lend themselves well to a culture of innovation, it does not make planning and maintaining space during a pandemic an easy task, so additional administrative controls were required.  Again employees of the R&D Center had a plan, a group mentioned they could build a custom capacity tracking app that would look at who is in each workspace and ensure there was not overcrowding.  As the app was being built certain risk parameters that had been defined, such as how many workers could be in a given area, were easily integrated into the app. While people signed out workspace (whether it was offices or labs), capacity constraints could be taken into consideration. Additionally, the center used the app to assist in their ongoing contact tracing program. “We have had folks log where they are each day, and we also have badging data [doors throughout the center require a badge to enter].  Those, combined with interviews by HR, have allowed us to quickly determine who may have had contact that would put them at risk.  Close contact is defined by the CDC as within 6 feet for 15 minutes or more.  We err on the side of caution and consider anyone in the same lab (even at more than 6 feet) to be at risk,” Julia mentions. “The app now helps us manage occupancy and gives a great starting point for contact tracing; we also use badge data and interviews.”  The team designed and built the app within a weeks and it was live shortly thereafter.

“Controls” are often thought to be top down initiatives, and best practices, come from sharing ideas cross functionally -  both of these concepts need to be integrated into your return to work action plan.  There has to be both in order to meet the needs of the current and future workplace environment.  Controls need to be put in place for the safety of employees, but harboring an innovative environment where coworkers take extra steps to ensure their fellow coworkers feel safe; that requires empowering the individuals and is ultimately the path towards sustainably returning to work during uncertain times.