ZEUS’s first priority is always the health, safety and wellbeing of our people and delivering outstanding service levels to our highly-valued customers.

Since 7 February, we have been providing regular updates to our customers via our website on our coronavirus precautions and preparedness.

We are today announcing a further important update to our Covid-19 HSE policy which will help us to continue to maximise our support for our clients while ensuring high standards of safety, health and wellbeing for both their and our people.

Our Commitment to the Health, Safety & Wellbeing of our Employees and our Customers’ Employees

We implemented a specific Covid-19 HSE policy at the outset of the virus and have updated that policy regularly as the situation has developed, ensuring that the protections we have in place for all our people and our clients remain current and appropriate.

We first implemented our Covid-19 HSE policy in Greater China; extended it across all our markets when the virus became a global pandemic; moved to a post-lockdown HSE policy by market as restrictions started to ease and the movement of people (and infection risk) started to increase; and updated our policy again as our markets opened up further after the immediate post-lockdown phase and we identified the risk of second or further waves.

True to our commitment to put in place the right protections for our people and our customers at the right time, we have been continuously monitoring developments both in the Covid-19 situation and in scientific understanding of this new virus.

The latest update to our Covid-19 HSE policy reflects important recent developments in understanding of the virus, including: the increasing consensus that aerosol transmission may be the primary means of infection; and the growing evidence, based on documented cases of infection, that “viral load” builds up over time in unventilated and enclosed spaces.

Key changes in our updated policy include:

• requiring sites to increase natural ventilation by opening doors and windows where possible
• recommending limiting internal and external physical meetings to 30 minutes
• requiring any person who is given special dispensation to travel internationally by air to take a Covid-19 test within 48 hours of departure.

The very extensive control, hygiene and prevention measures which were already in our policy – including Covid-related sanitisation of our facilities – will continue. These include the following:

• All employees are required to wear face masks, including when commuting on public transport and travelling for work – and we have secured supplies of these for all our people
• We will maintain a minimum social distancing of at least 1m (or greater, if required by local law) between people in our facilities
• We will continue to ask visitors to our facilities to comply with certain health and safety requirements
• International business travel is not permitted without special approval and in line with our policy – including additional PPE measures.
• All employees who visit client or field locations are required to wear a face mask and comply with our own control, hygiene and prevention measures at a minimum.

In addition to our Covid-19 HSE policy, we have issued extensive communications to all our people in line with World Health Organisation guidance on how to minimise the risk of viral infection to them and others by taking effective hygiene measures and avoiding situations where the risk of infection could be heightened.

The actions we have taken globally include:

• Issuing face masks to all employees.
• Posters and videos, providing guidance to employees and visitors to Intertek facilities.
• Health alerts and guidance to our colleagues, including a detailed “Novel Coronavirus Control and Prevention Manual”.
• In accordance with this manual, we have hygiene and other protection measures in the workplace, at home and at customer locations for field-based colleagues.
• When conducting field-based Health assessments for factories, vendors or customer sites, we will be asking our partners to first confirm they have no suspected cases of coronavirus and have taken their own precautionary measures before we deploy our people, excluding where we conduct unannounced management system audits.

Our Commitment to our Customers

At ZEUS, our commitment to health, safety and wellbeing is a foundation which we affirm to all our internal and external stakeholders.

Intertek provides mission-critical quality assurance solutions to its clients to ensure that they can operate with well-functioning supply chains in each of their operations.

ZEUS businesses continue to operate with a Business As Usual approach around the world, recognising that there could be some disruption caused by government initiatives to contain the virus. Our Business Continuity Plans are fully in place across our operations and we are also staying in close contact with our customers to mitigate the potential disruption to the supply chains of our customers’ operations.

We have updated our customer service library to inform our clients about our specific Novel Coronavirus resources and services.

We can also guide new manufacturers on complex safety and quality requirements when producing critical care equipment to address the Covid-19 related health and safety risks globally.

Never before has health, safety and wellbeing been so vital to every aspect of our lives. Whether at work, shopping, eating out or using public transport, employees and consumers are looking to brands for trust, assurance and peace of mind. 

Customers can read more about our latest solutions and contact us for immediate assistance here: https://www.zeusinspection.com/

Should customers need further information, please contact your ZEUS representative who will assist.

Covid-19 remains a developing situation and we will provide regular updates.