The current Government advice is clear that online retail is open and encouraged. This, of course, means that the warehouses and logistic infrastructures behind the online sales also must remain open. That, in most cases, requires people to be at work.

Each online business should evaluate if they should remain operationalor make the difficult decision to close for the foreseeable future.

If you decide to continue, it goes without saying that to get through this period, changes to working practices need to be maintained, people should work from home where possible, face to face meetings should be done via video or conference calls.

But a warehouse picker or a packer cannot work from home and the latest Government guidelines allow people to travel to and from work if they cannot work from home.

It is therefore more important than ever to ensure that we do all we canto keep up our duty of care to staff who are in the workplace.

These include:

Hand Washing

Giving all staff the facility to wash their hands, or use hand sanitiser,on entry into the building, and when leaving. This should be as close aspossible to the entrance without the need to open and close internal doors ifpossible.

Making sure there are opportunities for staff to wash their hands and/orsanitise regularly throughout the day is also important.

Workstations

Many staff will have a workstation of their own anyway, but where staffshare stations, say at the end of a shift etc, then extra care should be takento make sure all areas of the workstation are wiped down with disinfectant beforethe station is passed over. Allowing extra time at the end of shifts to do thisis important

Work Tools

It is easy to forget in normal circumstances that many people handlevarious tools throughout the working day “Lend me your knife”, “pass me thattape gun” etc are commonly heard throughout the day.

Provision to provide individuals with their own personal equipmentshould be made to minimise the sharing culture. And if items do need to beshared or handed over at the end of a shift, they to should be wiped down andsanitised.

As warehouses have more and more technology inside of them, with PDA’s, keyboards, touch screens and computer mice common items in today's warehouses. The same rules apply, keep to your own personal items through your shift and ensure that devices etc are sanitised before they are handed over at the end of a shift.

PPE

Where possible, employers should try and provide disposable gloves, facemasks etc to ensure that they are minimising the possible spread through handand face contact.

Above all common sense is the key and ensuring that your staff adhere tothe increased cleaning.

Employees

Of course, the health and safety of staff is the priority and of utmost importance. But warehouses still need to operate.

There are a few things we can consider to help our staff be as safe aspossible:

• Encourage staff toavoid public transport where possible. Allow them more flexible start andfinish times to allow increased travel time.

• Offer longer orshorter days. This could minimise crowding in the warehouse,

• Rearrange packingbenches etc to ensure staff remain the recommended 2m apart as much as possiblein line with recommended social distancing.

• Look at splitting youroperation into multiple shifts. This will lower the number of staff in thewarehouse at any time enabling you to continue operations but minimise staffcontact.

Flexibility during this unprecedented period is the key to doing all youcan to minimise the risks to your staff and offer the duty of care that you owethem.

The country as a whole is working together to get through this, and consumersare more realistic with their demands and understand that deliveries may be delayedor take longer during this time.

Warehouses, carriers and delivery operatives are all working very hard, butall with reduced staff numbers of operating hours so is not unreasonable toinform customers that orders may take slightly longer than normal.