To gain insight into the potential steps US companies are taking, we surveyed 100 executives at firms across the country and across industries. These executives expect 80 percent of their workforce, on average, to be back on-site by September and that 88 percent will be back by December (Exhibit 1). The results also suggest that for these companies, working from home won’t be the next normal for all. Four in ten respondents say that permanent remote working is possible for less than one-quarter of their desk employees, while two-thirds say that no field employees will be able to work from home indefinitely.
As part of their guidance for reopening businesses,1 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that companies follow a hierarchy of controls (starting with eliminating the virus from their workplaces) to protect on-site workers.2 Executives were asked about the following four types of interventions that correspond with the CDC’s guidance: limiting direct and indirect person-to-person contact, identifying and isolating potentially infectious people, increasing hygiene protocols, and using personal protective equipment, or PPE (Exhibit 2).3 The results suggest that most companies surveyed have, or will, implement many of the measures tested in the survey, as well as a range of change-management practices that reinforce the behaviors that can help keep employees safe at their workplaces. In fact, many respondents’ companies are applying measures across the four interventions. Seventy-six percent of those surveyed say they have implemented or planned for at least one measure from each of the four categories.
Limiting direct and indirect person-to-person contact
Efforts to limit interpersonal contact have involved redefining where work can happen (for example, by enabling remote work), minimizing opportunities for interaction, and making physical changes to work spaces. According to the survey, most respondents are limiting or plan to limit contact through a mix of both policy-based and physical interventions. Most commonly, their companies have limited larger gatherings or switched meetings to videoconferences (VCs), restricted the entry of nonemployees to work sites, and reduced the number of employees on-site.
While physical changes to limit contact are less common than policy ones, majorities of respondents report plans to change their workstations, food-service areas, and other physical infrastructure (Exhibit 4). The most common physical change respondents’ companies have already made is separating workstations, which 50 percent of respondents report doing and an additional 34 percent say they plan to. Changes that require the installation of new technology—replacing handles with touch-free devices, for example—are reported less often.
Identifying and isolating potentially infectious people
Respondents’ companies are focusing on a range of measures to try to identify and isolate employees who present COVID-19 symptoms or have tested positive, based on CDC guidelines. Of the measures these companies use or plan to use, checking employee temperatures is the most common; nearly three-quarters say their companies already check employee temperatures or plan to (Exhibit 5). Temperature checks for customers are less common, with 40 percent of respondents saying they already perform these checks or plan to do so. And while regular diagnostic testing is less common than other measures, 35 percent say their companies test employees or plan to do so.
Of the respondents whose companies are checking temperatures or plan to, more than half say checks would be mandatory for all employees (Exhibit 6). Seventy-eight percent of those respondents say they plan to check temperatures daily, while an additional 9 percent plan to do so two or more times per day.
According to respondents, companies’ approaches to contact tracing (that is, tracing and monitoring contacts of employees who have tested positive for COVID-19) are not as consistent. Of the 46 respondents whose companies are planning to contact trace, 17 say they have or will create a dedicated team to identify employees who have been in contact with an employee who has a confirmed case. Sixteen respondents report planning for some degree of contact tracing within the company, but in an ad hoc or decentralized way.