Shall I Work from Home or Go to the Office in the Age of Omicron?
Employers Need Clear Answers for Employees

Coral Springs Florida , 01/11/2022 :  No one can dispute that for most business owners, productivity requires interaction between employees. Many employees actually want to go back to work as they are either Zoomed out or tired of the lack of social interaction that exists in a healthy office environment.

With all of the confusion I felt the need to develop a decision chart for our company that our employees can follow. Shall I come to work or shall I stay home ? A clear message is important.

We have always operated our company, CellAntenna , with certain policies that have kept our employees as safe as possible in this time of Coronavirus. We did not wait for our customers to institute compliance with their policies. We proactively instituted ours.

The Omicron virus poses additional challenges to the office environment. It is not like the other variants since it is spreading faster and at the same time, exiting faster. For my company, we have always had the Covid-19 policy in place.

I developed this policy for CellAntenna at the beginning of this pandemic . As with the CDC, I continue to implement modifications given new information in this ever changing environment.

When vaccines were offered early in 2021, CellAntenna’s policy was you needed to be vaccinated. I chose June 30 2021 as the date in which this had to happen. In our office we have people of all ages, and all risk groups. As well, some have challenges at home where their family members may also be in the high risk group.

Our employees appreciated that we wanted them safe and they wanted their friends and colleagues safe as well. No one waited to June 30. They got vaccinated.

Since we are in the radio electronics business no one at CellAntenna believed that the government was up to malfeasance , and the vaccine was injecting a radio into your body so the NSA can track you. Since we are in the cell phone communication business we already know that as long as you have a cell phone, and you are using it, tracking you is never a problem.

I often joke that there was no need to worry about the vaccination first shot since the radio was so small the government was injecting you with. It is the second shot you need to be worried about. That is when they inject you with the batteries. Those are big. The booster is the high gain antenna. That hurts. You would be surprised that some people actually take this stuff seriously. But you already know that 🙂

The Decision Chart below that I have developed for CellAntenna assumes that everyone is vaccinated. If that is the case with your business, then this may be for you. It also assumes everyone is rowing the boat together. That is, your employees are on board with your philosophy regarding health.

The requirements to come to the office change a little if one is vaccinated or vaccinated with a booster.

I also believe that the Antigen test is the one we need to rely upon. To me the PCR test does not tell you if you are still contagious. It is too sensitive. The Antigen test however requires you to have enough virus to be contagious. At least, this is what I got from the latest CDC information.

It is possible that you can be at the beginning of the virus test negative on the Antigen , but have enough viral load to test Positive on the PCR. However, since this is a fast acting virus, it is the symptoms that are the sign. We are also relying upon being fully vaccinated and there really is no other way to move forward if we do not want to lock down our businesses.

Here is the DECISION CHART I developed for our business :

 

 

You may agree or disagree with my reasoning or logic. Feel free to make your own decision chart of course.

Our policy as well will be to take the masks off once positivity rates in our area drop below 5%. ( currently Broward County is at 35% ) . We used the same standard last year and were mask free for a few months. Then Delta hit, positivity increased past 5%, and we all took the decision to MASKUP .

I may be updating this chart depending on the information that the CDC provides, as well as if there are new variants coming out to lesson or increase the restrictions. Common sense will dictate my decision .

In the time of Covid-19 and its variants, we all need to move on with both our businesses and our lives. We need to apply common sense and of course make decisions based on current information.

I have always said that given the right information I can make the right decision. I hope the decision chart helps you develop your own policy. Let me know how it turned out.

Author: HelpMeHoward