NAGALAND: How COVID-19 ready is your workplace?

Naga IT professional develops assessment tool to help businesses evaluate preparedness


Morung Express News

Dimapur | June 25


With lockdown restrictions being relaxed, many businesses are slowly resuming operations.


In Nagaland, the district administrations have allowed reopening of shops and business establishments in the respective districts with certain conditions applied.


Along with the precautions and safety guidelines laid down by the government, individuals and businesses can now refer to an additional self-assessment tool developed by a Naga IT professional based in Bangalore to determine how ready they are for resuming operations during the COVID-19 pandemic.


The COVID-19 Workplace Readiness Assessment Tool is an online self-assessment tool developed by Ochen Ao, a Senior Infrastructure Consultant on Windows Active Directory, Identity and Cloud Services, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.


Speaking to The Morung Express, Ochen shared that he felt the need to help workplaces effectively follow guidelines to ensure safety.

 

About the tool

The Workplace Readiness Assessment Tool is an advisory tool that will enable organisations to understand their current level of preparedness and key risk areas. It will also help them plan and establish COVID-19 specific policies and norms, and necessary management practices.


Departmental and corporate leaders can use the questionnaire in the tool to assess their readiness to address potential workplace challenges and help identify areas of focus for their preparedness efforts.


The assessment tool takes the broad epidemic factors and objectives, and suggests a simple  readiness threshold that organisations need to meet or exceed in order to operate effectively, while managing their pandemic response. They can then decide for themselves using a mix-and-match advisory.


According to Ochen, the tool can be used by individuals as well to check their COVID-19 preparedness.

 

How does the tool work?

The tool is very straight-forward and easy to use and navigate. There are two URLs for individual and organizational use.


•    A user has to first launch the URL from their computer or smartphone devices and enter their details.
    For businesses: http://covid19-nl.ml/orghome.html
    For individuals: http://covid19-nl.ml/home.html


•    Click on the Start Assessment button and on the proceeding page, answer the questionnaire and submit the assessment. The results of your self- assessment will be displayed in the results page with the assessment risk scoring of Low, Medium or High.


•    Depending on the risk rating, recommendations will be provided to the user.


The 38 year old from Dimapur has almost 13 years of experience in the IT industry, and developing this progressive web application was with the aim to help people in Nagaland “stay safe and aware of the current pandemic.”


A similar tool was recently developed by a team of Indian Institute of Science researchers, in collaboration with the Karnataka State Disaster Management Authority (KSDMA). With their permission, Ochen based his design on their model and developed a ‘Nagaland-centric’ tool, excluding certain sections which were not applicable to Nagaland.


“Norms are being relaxed, but Coronavirus is here to stay. When offices resume, this tool can help ensure a healthy and safe workspace,” Ochen said.


While the self-assessment tool is targeted for organizational use, it is not limited to offices. Using the recommendations provided after the assessment, individuals, churches, schools, colleges, and institutions can make use of this tool to see how prepared they are to resume work and business.