The COVID-19 Journey – A Rapid Pace of Change
Keeping abreast of the COVID-19 Requirements is almost a full-time job for ESQ professionals at the moment, particularly where the role is Australia or Asia Pacific-wide. There is very little that is similar between jurisdictional rules, so here are some tips from Blend ESQ on how you can increase your efficiency in interpreting the NSW rules across the Illawarra and Sydney Surrounds; and therefore your communications and compliance.
1. How to Stay Ahead of Tomorrow’s Changes
Get back some of your time to help the kids learn from home by limiting this to:
- Watching only the first 5-10 minutes of the NSW Premier Press Release at 11 am each day. The NSW Premier will announce important changes at that time.
- Subscribe to the RSS feed for NSW Health’s latest media releases. We find this useful for ‘Stay at Home’ changes, in order to plan for geographic or resource changes, ahead of Public Health Order updates.
2. Case Locations Mapped
- Glance at the NSW Health case location map each day, so you can be aware of case locations near your work premises. Ask your workforce to check case locations daily before attending work.
3. Public Health Orders from the Source
- Track amendments to the Public Health Orders via the NSW Legislation website. View their ‘covid19-legislation’ page for in-force orders and a link to exemptions.
- Most of NSW’s daily changes are through the ‘Public Health (COVID-19 Additional Restrictions for Delta Outbreak) Order 2021′. If you click on the Amendment, you can read a document that just shows what has changed.
3. Communicate the Requirements and the Change
- Maintain a document in a central location that outlines current requirements relevant to your business, e.g. stay at home, declared area worker requirements, testing, mandatory vaccination circumstances, face coverings, hygiene, work premise entry, travel requirements, temporary accommodation, etc. Update this document only when the Public Health Orders change to ensure it remains accurate.
- Also provide a document in a central location that summarises the changes, so that people can find this quickly and work out what it means for them. This will assist in reducing overwhelm, keeping your business COVIDSafe and your work family healthy.
Much like COVID-19 Legislation, the specifics in this post may be out of date by tomorrow 19 August 2021, so please don’t rely on this information. However, we hope the principles of managing this information will remain the same and that you find something useful here to add to your toolkit.
Information Sources and Useful Links
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