Covid Relief staff

Mitigating the Impact of Covid on Emergency Services Teams

Last week’s article explored how FSA has been helping clients deal with the increased number of patient enquiries at onsite medical clinics brought on by covid and the need to have more Medical staff to deal with this.

The spread of Covid is monitored and managed through the strategic use of RAT and PCR testing at airports and site entry points, but what happens if your internal Medical and Emergency Services staff get sick, are close contacts or caring for family members ?

This is the exact risk that one of Tier 1 mining clients in NSW was trying to mitigate against. The client had run internal scenarios where it quickly became apparent that if Paramedics and ESO numbers were not kept to a minimum number then operations may have to be put on hold to ensure workforce safety. This was not an option for the client and a solution was needed.

FSA since last August has been working closely with this client initially bringing on a number of additional staff rostered on, familiarised with the multiple sites, and trained up to work on any part of the large facility to relieve Paramedics and ESO’s as required. Throughout the course of lockdowns and increased NSW Covid counts the solution was adjusted and we added further on call staff and finally then as the need arose moved them to a medium term onsite roster.

This flexibility and working with the client has been key to FSA’s success and ensured that the client has been able to continue full operations despite having several internal staff unable to meet work requirements due to covid related constraints.

For WA businesses this Scenario planning is something that you will likely be working through in preparation for the coming months of uncertainty and the operational impact of increased Covid cases. Here at FSA we have both the staff and experience to help you through these challenging times and can work with you to deploy solutions that have worked for other clients.

Please contact David Spencer david.spencer@fsa.com.au for a confidential discussion on how we can help you.