Many financial services organizations, including Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg, Capital One, and Discover have on-site occupational health clinics, enabling them to implement these programs relatively quickly. We recommend partnering with a third party that has existing relationships with organizations at the forefront of occupational health testing, to create order and process while developing these programs quickly and efficiently. Ensure the partner is focused on the quality of tests, has relationships with reliable laboratories, and uses safe and convenient nationwide collection sites to support your organization. An additional benefit of an outside party is the confidentiality and controls that are put in place external from the business for storing and leveraging sensitive employee medical information.
Every organization has different testing requirements including initial COVID-19 return to work testing, and regular re-testing of employee populations. Those requirements will continue to change as the CDC and EEOC update guidelines and businesses adapt to the evolving coronavirus pandemic. Ensure the partner you choose supports multiple testing options, is available to respond with the tests and support needed, can anticipate the quickly changing landscape and requirements, and supports offerings that are flexible and scalable, ensuring they are providing the most reliable tests as they become available.
Risk Assessment
Once banks and others in the financial services industry prioritize those roles returning to brick-and-mortar locations and develop new health and safety programs, they need to establish screening requirements for hiring, rehiring, and returning to work. Financial institutions are responsible for protecting their customers from dishonest, reckless, or fraudulent behavior. FINRA recommends regularly screening candidates and employees appropriately for indicative events that either disqualify them from performing securities-related functions or require establishing supervisory controls for safety and security. It’s important that background screening and rescreening programs include credit, liens, judgments, and bankruptcies. These reports flag risk indicators and enable organizations to leverage data to make better hiring and rehiring decisions.
A resilient return to workplace plan will be flexible enough to navigate the uncertainty of this constantly shifting COVID-19 pandemic. Once organizations create their return to workplace plan by prioritizing roles, developing health testing and safety protocols, and performing risk assessment screening – while considering best practices and government issued guidelines – they can feel confident that they have taken the right steps to protect their employees, customers, partners, reputations, and brands.
Joy Henry is the general manager of Sterling’s Financial and Business Services Group.