Now that many are heading back to work outside the home, it’s more important than ever to ensure safety guidelines are followed. Remaining cautious is how we’ll ensure COVID-19 doesn’t get another foothold in our society. So, let’s face one of the questions many are asking: how can we safely take lunch breaks at work? After all, in order to eat, people will need to remove their masks. Fortunately, safe workplace lunch areas are easier than ever to achieve with outdoor tenting. Check out how Varsity Tents can help.
Avoiding Crowds
If we’ve learned anything about COVID-19 safety, it’s that we need to avoid crowds. So, how is one supposed to eat lunch at the same time as half their coworkers? There are two answers to this great question.
The first is that management at any place of business should take the steps to increase lunch periods. If staff is typically split into two lunch periods, they should be split into four. This will cut the size of each lunch group in half, making it possible for coworkers to maintain distance from each other while maskless.
The second is that lunch breaks should take place outdoors. This improves safety in more than one way. Let’s look at how eating outdoors improves safety.
The Safety of the Outdoors
The most important reason for eating outdoors is that the continuous flow of air keeps people from breathing in each other’s air. We’ve learned that COVID-19 primarily spreads through aerosolized droplets. While it was initially believed surface contamination was a huge part of infection rates, it turns out it may be less involved than we thought. That means the virus is caught mainly through inhaling infected air that someone else has exhaled.
Because of this, distance is important, but not as important as keeping air flowing or filtered with specialized filtration devices. Eating outdoors keeps infected air continuously blown away by the breeze, protecting coworkers from any potential infection.
Additionally, being outdoors means having a lot more space to spread out. The more distance between two people, the less likely any infected air will be able to travel between them.
Comfort and Cover
While eating outdoors is an easy fix, it requires some equipment. Tables and chairs will need to be set up but, most importantly, employees will need some kind of cover for safe workplace lunch areas. Varsity Tents provides tents in many sizes. These tents can have their flaps opened up, providing cover from rain, the hot sun, and air stagnation. Flaps can optionally be opened or closed to provide shade on any side of the tent where the sun is shining.
With this setup of outdoor tenting, spaced-out seating, and continuous airflow, your employees will have a safe workplace lunch area where they can feel free to take off their mask and enjoy a nice meal before returning to work. A quick wipe-down of each seat and table space after use with 70% alcohol or soap and water will kill any virus left behind and leave the space safe and ready for the next person to clock out for lunch.