Sector-specific guidelines Ontario businesses need to consider before reopening

TORONTO -- In preparation for the reopening of businesses across Ontario, the province has released sector-specific guidelines, offering recommendations to companies about how to keep staff and customers safe.

Here is a look at some of the advice the province is giving to businesses to adapt to the “new normal.”

Retail:

• Provide online ordering, delivery, or curbside pickup
• Eliminate at-the-door payment methods for delivery
• Provide training on how to keep cash registers, other equipment clean
• Control how may customers can enter the store at one time
• Manage traffic flow with floor markings and barriers

Hotels/ Hospitality/ Tourism:

• Limit customer contact and consider requiring check-in by phone or online
• Eliminate contact greetings such as handshakes
• Housekeepers should not shake dirty laundry and should remember to clean and disinfect hampers and other carts
• Eliminate non-essential tasks (hotel valet services, face to face meetings)
• Replace guest buffets with packaged food stations
• Eliminate guest self-service, disposable in-room glassware, and non-essential guest room amenities, and remove in-room tea/coffee machines, offering them only on demand

Office settings:

• Discourage sharing of telephones, keyboards, desks or workstations
• Develop systems to conduct work away from the office
• If direct client contact is essential and cannot be avoided, then staff should consider using personal protective equipment
• Provide easy access to soap and water
• Postpone non-essential face-to-face appointments or convert to virtual/video appointments
• Stagger start times and breaks
• Reposition workstations to increase physical distances or install barriers and partitions

Transit:

• Consider eliminating access close to operator/ driver with signage or by forcing passengers to enter or exit buses through rear doors
• Place posters or other signage in high passenger traffic areas asking passengers to stay home if sick, to travel only when necessary, and practice good respiratory and hand hygiene
• Institute measures to physically separate or impose physical distance of at least two metres between transit operators and passengers using partitions, visual cues or signage
• Transit workers should use or wear personal protective equipment that the worker’s employer requires to be used or worn

Emergency services:

• Ensure that appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) is being worn to limit exposure during close contact
• Conduct active screening at the beginning of an interaction with members of the public when a firefighter is required to be closer than 2 metres
• Do not touch personal items without appropriate PPE, such as gloves.
• Limit the amount of face-to-face contact during work activities such as station duties and hand-overs and practice physical distancing
• Approach patient from rear (if possible) and place a paper surgical mask on them or an O2 mask if required
• Disinfect personal issue equipment (e.g. handcuffs) and shared equipment ( radio, keyboard, phone, shared workstation)
• Limit the amount of face-to-face contact during planned work activities, investigations, search and arrest activities

Construction:

• Plan for enough tools to be on site so workers don't have to share
• Place work clothes into a bag before taking home to wash
• Have appropriate number of toilets and clean-up facilities

Film and TV:

• Mark the distance for workstations and seats for guests to maintain physical distance
• Consider the use of technology to communicate and interview guests
• Consider long handles for microphones rather than arm’s length/hand-held
• Increase your cleaning frequency – on everything from desks, seats and vehicles to commonly touched surfaces like cameras, computers, microphones, phones, door handles and switches
• Postpone non-essential projects and tasks
• Replace buffets with wrapped food items on set

Transport drivers:

• Clean vehicle cab frequently
• During deliveries, limit the amount of face-to-face contact
• Wear gloves when handling packages

Utilities:

• Limit the transfer of tools
• Do not share pens, rubber gloves, or any PPE
• Properly disinfect trucks and equipment upon returning to the shop area

Waste Collection:

• To ensure physical distancing, stagger start times and breaks
• Restrict the number of people on site
• Avoid sharing tools

Food Service:

• Protect food from contamination by using guards or covering for food and utensils
• Food prepared for takeout and delivery should be packaged to protect food from contamination
• PPE should be used as appropriate

Manufacturing:

• Put barriers in place between workers as well as workers and the product
• Consider job rotation
• Have fewer workers doing the same task in the same space
• Keep visitors and staff a safe distance apart by using floor markings, installing barriers and partitions, and changing the work layout where possible to increase physical distance
• Reschedule unnecessary visits by supply chain partners, vendors, service technicians, or others.

Auto Service:

• Limiting services to by-appointment only and limiting the number of appointments per day
• If service bays are fairly close together, only use every other service bay

Agriculture:

• Ensure farm entry is limited to personnel performing essential activities
• Pre-authorized visitors to the farm should call ahead and schedule a meeting or drop-off time
• Try to limit the number of employees using farm equipment and if possible, assign each employee to their own piece of equipment

Other guidelines:

Handling and receiving packages (at home and at work):

• Request contactless delivery
• Use your own pen when signing for deliveries
• Wash hands immediately after receiving the package
• Clean and sanitize table tops, counters and floors where the package was placed