Most firms have no return-to-work strategy in place: Survey

More than 73% of companies have not yet created a return-to-work strategy, according to a survey of 150 professionals by attorneys at Philadelphia-based law firm Blank Rome LP released Thursday.

The survey polled clients that included C-suite executives, in-house counsel and human resources professionals in a wide range of industries from April 18-24, finding that more than a third of companies are relying on their state, local or regional authorities to create their return-to-work strategy, though slightly more than half of respondents said they were in the beginning stages of designing a plan.

More than half of the professionals surveyed said their company plans to mandate social distancing in the workplace when workers return, 64% of respondents said they will provide masks or facial personal protective equipment to workers and more than a third said they will provide gloves. Fewer than 10% of respondents said they do not plan to provide personal protective equipment. Of the respondents, 12% said they had received a U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration complaint and 15% said they had received a COVID-related employee complaint.

About 12% of companies said they expected to make substantial changes to reconfigure physical spaces in the workplaces for social distancing purposes, but about a third of companies said they do not have plans to make physical changes yet. Nearly a third of respondents said the company will stagger shifts and 27% said they plan to stagger dates for returning to the office.

A little more than a third of companies said they plan to require temperature checks and a little less than 1 percent of companies said they may also require antibody testing. More than half of the companies said they had an employee who tested positive for coronavirus.

About 55% of companies said they had not yet taken any employee-related, cost-cutting measures, but more than a third had furloughed or laid off workers and 29% said they anticipated furloughs on the horizon. However, respondents said that a best-case COVID scenario where the virus is under control, 72% believed their companies could be back to business as usual within three months, with 39% stating they could be back to normal in less than a month.

About half of the companies surveyed are currently operating as essential businesses and 44% are operating remotely as non-essential businesses. About one quarter of the respondents work for companies with more than 500 employees and nearly half of those surveyed are C-suite executives.

More insurance and workers compensation news on the coronavirus crisis here.