Safety, Risk and Liability in a COVID-19 World

When it comes to COVID-19 the messaging around what is the “right” response in dealing with a return to the workplace or training facility can be confusing, and government guidelines are often not clear. So what is the right way to move forward and how can technology assist us?

Across the world the guidelines for returning to work differ greatly between counties and states, and are often changing at a rate that is difficult to manage.  We too have struggled as a company to understand our own responsibility around COVID-19 and how we should move forward in this period of intense uncertainty. What is clear though is that we all have a duty to protect our staff, athletes, operators and/or student athletes to the best of our ability.

At Fusion Sport we’ve been complying as closely as possible to CDC guidelines and local guidelines, but further to that, we’ve also been looking at how we can do better to mitigate the risk for our staff beyond what may be ‘required’ by law at a particular time.

Key questions we’ve asked ourselves:

•What is the greatest cost to us if there is an outbreak of COVID-19 in the workplace?
•In what circumstances would we be liable?  How might that impact our company and relationship with staff members moving forward?
•How can we mitigate risk?

It soon became clear our focus should be:

•Staff health and safety
•Avoiding loss of productivity
•Upholding company reputation
•Mitigating any financial liability

Spending money right now with an uncertain future can be difficult, but the bottom line is that we must protect our staff, mitigate risk and reduce our liability.  If we don’t put in place robust protocols now, it could end up costing us a lot more down the track.

Our COVID-19 solution takes a proactive approach utilizing our Smartabase Human Performance Platform and Smartabase Athlete app to screen and monitor the health of our employees.

1. Staff (or athletes, students and operators) fill in a daily wellness questionnaire remotely in their Smartabase Athlete app to report symptoms. If they report certain symptoms they are automatically provided guidelines by the app on staying home and potentially seeing a doctor, or they are cleared to come into the facility.

2. Staff wear masks and check-in once at their workplace via the Smartabase Kiosk, taking their temperature with a Kinsa Bluetooth thermometer and using the Masimo Pulse Oximeter to measure their oxygen saturation. This data is collected in Smartabase and will indicate quickly if a staff member has a fever or are showing signs of illness, and they can return home if needed.

3. All of this data is collected in Smartabase in a COVID-19 dashboard where it can be reviewed by management (or medical staff for our clients) to provide medical assistance, track compliance and even assist in contact tracing as needed. Smartabase will also trigger alerts for management staff when certain parameters are met, whether this is a combination of new symptoms or something that has been persistently reported and may indicate illness.

For an added layer, some of our staff have wearable health technology devices like the Oura Ring, Fatigue Science, Apple watch, Garmin and Polar that can monitor varying aspects of health like sleep, HRV and overall readiness.

This data can also be integrated into Smartabase if your company wants to take it a step further still, and some of our clients including West Virginia University(read more here) are using data like this to review whether health technologies can indicate illness before symptoms start to show.

The entire process easily becomes a part of your daily routine, and is not time consuming or overly complex. Employing a mix of remote and on-site screening protocols helps keep the workplace healthy for our staff who need to come into the office. It also ensures we can keep in touch with staff working from home and provide an extra level of communication, ensuring our company is doing what we can to mitigate risk of COVID-19.

Fusion Sport has implemented similar protocols through the Smartabase Human Performance platform to our clients around the globe, particularly important when it comes to working with athletes and student athletes who need to come in to use facilities and train. We are proud to be supporting the NBA season restart in particular, which you can read about here.

We also support various military groups, protecting the health and safety of troops returning from duty or about to deploy. Read more about how the Air Force are utilizing Smartabase for COVID-19 screening here.

With such uncertainty and no signs the coronavirus is slowing down, implementing COVID-19 screening through Smartabase provides a comprehensive solution for your team that is flexible to change as the situation does. It also assists your company in taking a proactive approach to mitigating risk and reduces your liability.

For more information on COVID-19 monitoring in Smartabase click here, or reach out to our team to discuss your needs and review the platform.

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