How workplace COVID-19 testing is helping UK companies get back to work
As UK businesses begin to return to normal levels of activity and are inviting employees back to the office, they are searching for ways to support the physical and emotional health and wellbeing of their workforce. Many employers are considering using COVID-19 testing as part of their return to work strategies.
Coronavirus tests can help companies to determine if any of their employees have had the virus, which in turn can help shape their strategies for supporting the return of their workforce to the office. Testing can help give staff more confidence that their employer is taking their safety and wellbeing seriously and reassure them about returning to their workplace.
Even though it’s not yet clear if or for how long a past infection provides future immunity from the COVID-19 virus, testing is useful in spotting patterns in work environments or groups of employees that might indicate higher levels of risk, as well as checking the effectiveness of other safety measures.
However, COVID-19 tests can often be difficult to administer and slow to deliver results. In many cases, employees need to travel to testing stations or send off for testing kits and then wait 2-3 days for the results. A new service launched by one of the UK’s leading healthcare recruiters, MSI Group, aims to solve these problems and allow companies to get their workforce back up and running as quickly and easily as possible.
Employers can arrange testing days at the company’s place of work, in which a high volume of employees can be given tests administered by a trained clinician. Results are obtained within 3 minutes and can be given during the appointment slot. In this way, employers can get some or all of their workforce tested in one go, giving them a baseline to use when building their return to work strategy.
Here’s how one of MSI Group’s clients, VIP SKI Managing Director Andy Sturt, describes the process:
“In situ office testing was quick, smooth and efficient and gave us a useful Covid-19 benchmark from which we were able to apply our new Covid-19 workplace protocols. A useful way of showing diligence and introducing confidence to the workforce.”
MSI Group Ltd CEO Nick Simpson said:
“Rapid mass testing is an incredibly useful tool for companies who are keen to welcome their employees back to the workplace. As one of the UK’s leading healthcare recruiters, we know how crucial having a stable workforce is to the success of an organisation. That’s why we are very pleased to be able to offer the UK’s only end to end COVID-19 testing service, in collaboration with G+N Medical.
“To reinforce our commitment to helping combat Coronavirus, for every test completed, we also make a donation to the National Emergencies Trust Coronavirus Appeal.”