Going Back to the Workplace in a Pandemic
It's not normal to talk to your employer about the details of your health: your current temperature, who you've been exposed to, whether your kid is sick, whether or not you've been social distancing. So how do employers handle and manage this entirely new process of employees returning to the workplace in the midst of an ongoing pandemic? In this episode of Bio Eats World, Vineeta Agarwala (general partner at a16z), Phong Nguyen (EVP and General Manager at Accolade), Ryan Sandler (CEO and Cofounder of Truework), and Mark Sendak (Population Health & Data Science Lead at the Duke Institute for Health Innovation) talk about what it means for employers to now have to manage employee health in a whole new way, figuring out when it's safe to come back, how, and what tools you need. From monitoring employee health and preventing transmission to triaging what happens when there is a documented case; temperature checks (do they even make sense?); testing (how often and in what way?); and above all, where can technology help, this is an entirely new world for employers and employees both. All these decision trees involve not just a complex business logic and new tools and procedures, but also big issues around employee privacy and trust, and a fundamental shift in the relationship between employer and employee... as this becomes a new feature of our COVID world.