Keeping customers and employees safe when reopening

As the Australian Government moves to ease restrictions on hospitality venues and retail stores, the National COVID-19 Coordination Commission has created an online resource to help businesses safely plan for their reopening; ‘Planning tool to help businesses reopen and be COVID (Coronavirus) Safe’. This resource includes tips on how to prepare and prevent COVID-19, as well as understanding how to respond to a COVID-19 infection.

In addition, Australia’s key retail industry groups have released a ‘Retail Recovery Protocol for COVID-19 (Coronavirus)’, which contains a list of 10 key actions that retailers and shopping centres should take. These recommendations are designed to ensure that public health guidelines are still being followed when business begin to open back up to the community. Although aimed at retailers, the list offers relevant and helpful guidelines for any business owner looking to reopen to the public soon.

The recommendations include:

• Making alcohol-based hand sanitiser available at key locations such as store entrances, building entrances, customer service desks and food courts.

• Increasing frequency of cleaning and disinfecting of regularly used objects and hard surfaces (e.g. payment registers, ETFPOS machines, hand-rails, bathroom door handles, shelves, shopping trolleys, counters and benches, food-court tables, staff-rooms) and other key hygiene measures (e.g. waste disposal).

• Facilitating and encouraging social distancing guidelines in accordance with Government or public health authority directions, which is currently a distance of 1.5m. Actions could include signage ‘reminders’, one-way queueing, and ground markings (e.g. stickers or tape) for queueing.

• Promoting contactless transactions such as ‘tap-and-go’¹ instead of cash for payments, facilitating distancing at counters and benches, and staff wearing disposable gloves when they are handling objects and money.

¹The latest updates on tap-and-go payments can be found here: https://www.auspaynet.com.au/

Additional resources can be found on Tyro’s COVID-19 page here: https://www.tyro.com/coronavirus-covid-19-help-and-updates/