Understanding uptake of prevention and mitigation of COVID-19 at work actions in Iran

BACKGROUND: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has required organizations to make changes to ways of working to prevent and mitigate COVID-19 in employees. OBJECTIVE: To assess the workplace response to COVID-19 in Iran. METHODS: 255 organizations completed a two-part survey. Part 1 collected data describing the business; part 2 comprised the International Labor Organization (ILO) 30-item Prevention and Mitigation of COVID-19 at Work Actions Checklist. A four-point Likert scale was used to score each item according to whether preventative measures had been actioned. RESULTS: We found a dichotomy of commitment to managing COVID-19 at work. 42.5% of organizations had fully implemented the ILO recommended preventative actions, and 45.6% workplaces had not implemented any. Large organizations had significantly more preventative actions than SMEs; the healthcare sector had significantly better COVID-19 mitigation measures in place than construction projects; and organizations with a health and safety management system had significantly more prevention actions in place. CONCLUSIONS: ILO provided a good framework to support risk assessment of COVID-19, however only half the organizations were undertaking the necessary biological hazard control actions to prevent COVID-19 at work. There remains a need to understand the inaction of organizations who do not risk assess despite being in a pandemic.

Automated summary

The study revealed a discrepancy in managing the risk of COVID-19 among organizations. While some large enterprises fully implemented the recommended prevention measures by the ILO, there were also some workplaces that did not take any action.