This is an excerpt from our live podcast called The New Normal Business Show with Joey Gurango & Wilson Chua.
The Philippine government sectors such as the Department of Trade and Industry or DTI and the Department of Labor and Employment or DOLE have released new guidelines for employers in this new normal.
COMPLIANCE OF THE ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENT
Business owners nowadays have to keep their businesses afloat during the pandemic and at the same time, comply with the new regulations and rules that the government has been mandating. It can give employers a hard time to do things all at once and all together.
There's a new guideline that is being issued by DOLE that companies have to submit daily or monthly reports on illness and accidents within the organization.
It is understandable that since we're living in a new normal for all of us, we are still adjusting to this change and have to keep our employees' best interest to mind.
There are many factors to consider when doing health monitoring in an organization, and one of those is the additional workload and paperwork, for example, that HR teams have to deal with. And this can cause errors in collecting sensitive data, especially if it's not automated and is done manually. This is the reason why companies who will be complying need to ensure accurate data collection and being up to date to the DOLE or DTI announcement on this mandate.
DATA COLLECTION ISSUES
This task can be grueling for the employers, and health data is one of the most challenging data that employers have to collect. This challenge can cause delays and mishandling of personal information of an employee's health.
In this episode, Wilson and I suggested possible places where data collection can be done for the employees without the employers being saddled by this new requirement like the barangay or health centers.
According to Wilson data collection is a potential liability to the data protection act, and there's a higher possibility for data to be breached. Forms that need to be filled out manually or by hand to encoding it digitally can cause errors.
One of the digital tools that employers can use to gather data is by using Google forms. It is a free tool that companies can utilize, but it's not great for large firms or enterprises.
I, on the other hand, think that there will be companies that will not comply with these mandates which can result in low compliance, and not compliance leads to penalties. Low compliance is as good as no data at all.
PRIVACY ACT BREACH
One of the issues that employers can face complying with the additional mandate is the privacy act breach. Employees have the right to protect their privacy, especially on their health information. The last thing that employers want to face is the privacy act breach, and this can wreak havoc on the side of the company.
Employers need to be careful about handling personal health information of their employees, especially this pandemic.
TOOLS THAT COMPANIES CAN USE FOR HEALTH MONITORING
Here are the tools or digital apps that companies or enterprises can use to comply with the health monitoring for organizations. It's a mix of international and local technology apps. It is best to patronize our local apps by using these within your organizations as a means of supporting the IT industry.
First, let's talk about some foreign apps. This gives us a peek at what other countries are doing.
Ceridian - It is an app for companies with health hazard duties. Ceridian is designed as part of the company's suite for business continuity.
Safetytek - This is a digital assessment tool that is used for indoor medical frontliners wherein health managers can keep track of their health personnel's symptoms or health.
Nethealth - It is an app developed to track the exposure of COVID-19.
Appian - Appian is an IT platform that uses a template to generate applications that are COVID-19 response management that companies can find useful.
Pega - Pega is a digital dashboard where employers can assess employees' risk in realtime. They can access the dashboard anytime and anywhere.
Kokomo - A program that is built for collecting health information of employees or individuals and adding AI to the data.
But what about the Philippines? Our friends from the industry have also created some awesome apps.
StaySafe.ph is first used by the IATF here in the Philippines for contact tracing of COVID-19 individuals.
CLEAR is also a contact tracing app that first developed a product here in the Philippines.
Lastly, CURVE. It is an anonymous Daily Health Diary, where you can voluntarily record your symptoms, assessment, tests, and exposures related to a virus. CURVE is a product of SERVIO Technologies. Visit www.curveph.com for more info!
As mentioned in the last blog, Novid is excellent to use for practicing social distancing by using an audible alarm to prompt them to stay apart in case they get too close. This highly recommends this application for employers or business owners.
If you would like to watch the FULL episode, you can now watch it on our official YouTube Channel!
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