IOWA, USA — More and more businesses are starting to shut down because of coronavirus cases within their workforce after opening up to full capacity.
Safeguard Iowa is an organization that helps business owners navigate through crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. Local 5 sat down with Safeguard Iowa Executive Director Dutch Geisinger to discuss what advice he would give Iowa businesses.
Local 5 News: How do you advise businesses who might be on the fence about whether they should open up in the first place?
Dutch Geisinger, Executive Director of Safeguard Iowa: I'm really pretty proud of our business owners because they're proceeding with some caution as they should. It's a really difficult choice to make.
Especially looking at our smaller businesses, where if you lose one or two employees, you lose 25% of your workforce. And that's a really hard thing to cope with. We've been advised, then, to pay attention to what the CDC and Iowa Department of Public Health are advising our business owners, that social distancing piece. If you think that you can open safely, absolutely. But if you can maintain that workforce working from home and doing those things effectively, they can do from from home or remote location.
Really, there's no rush to get back.
Local 5; What kind of stories are you hearing from some of the businesses that you work with about the specific challenges that they're facing in trying to operate under this new normal?
Geisinger: A lot of the challenges come from our service industry where they really count on people coming in to visit their facilities and a lot of the smaller businesses just don't have the space to maintain social distancing necessary.
They're finding other ways to continue to do business as effectively. Restaurants come the mind, just a lot of the smaller diners and places like that that are out there. If you try to maintain six feet between tables, it really limits your customer base.
But they found other ways, creative ways, to do things of opening outside dining and trying to be effective again and maintain that that distance that's so effective in stopping the spread of the virus.
Local 5: Can employers require their workers to be tested for COVID-19 before they come back?
Geisinger: That's a very fine line ... they cannot require that they be tested before they.
[With] some new guidance through Iowa Department of Public Health and it's become a lot easier to be tested now through sites like TestIowa and other places. Even your local providers, medical care providers, could provide testing now so it's not as difficult to get tested as it was back even four weeks ago.
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