Putting social distancing signs and other types of safety signage in your establishment is a must if you want to conduct your business while keeping everyone safe from COVID-19.
If you are one of those businesses fortunate enough to survive the ordeal of the past few months, you will have to do everything it takes to stay open and hopefully even grow while surfing the tides of the pandemic.
Effective communication with customers is one of the challenges that businesses face during this time. Fortunately, providers of safety signage and personal protective equipment are working hard to help businesses keep up with local safety requirements.
COVID-19 Signage For Your Business
Reasons Why Your Business Needs COVID-19 Signage
To update customers about essential information
Most likely there will be changes in your store hours and other workflow operations in your business. Still, you want your customers to know that you are operational and how they can avail of your services during this time. You can put up a sign announcing that you are open to serve customers, or informing them of your new store hours.
If you are still closed, you can put up a sign announcing the date of your grand re-opening in your window or outside your storefront.
To show how you are complying with safety standards.
It's understandable that people will be hesitant to venture outside given the risk of getting infected. Because of this, you have to assure your customers that your establishment is a safe place for them to be in.
Putting up signs about the safety precautions your business is taking can give customers peace of mind and encourage them to return.
To remind employees of workplace safety precautions
For the first few weeks at least, your employees will still be adjusting to the protective procedures in your workplace. Even if you have already briefed them of the new rules in place, it still helps to place visual reminders all over the store or office.
This is especially important for restaurants and other businesses that deal with strict sanitation policies and heavy customer traffic.
Best Practices for Signage Communication During the Pandemic
Both employees and customers have to shift their behaviors and interactions as they carefully step back into the world while the pandemic is still going on. Signage can encourage people in helping each other navigate this new normal.
Here are some ideas on how you can use signage to introduce new practices and give people comfort during this time of uncertainty.
Make communication friendly
Most signage materials pre-Covid are designed to induce stress in those who see it in order to convey importance and urgency. During these times, it helps to make your signage less harsh, unwelcoming, and dangerous, while still getting the message across.
Tweaking the color palettes and typography can produce dramatic results in making signage more friendly and less threatening.
Use your brand in your signage
You want your customers to know that your business is willing and able to comply with guidelines and earnest in keeping people safe.
You can make use of color, material, phrasing, and illustrations to reflect your brand in your signs. This can help bring an uplifting and positive experience for both customers and employees.
Create a communications campaign along with your new signage
If this is compatible with your business strategy, this is certainly worth the effort. A communications campaign can make your signage initiative have more impact.
You can do this by developing encouraging messages for email, social media, and digital communications that complement your overall COVID strategy. You can use the same images and copy that you used in your signs to keep branding consistent.
Read More: How to Make Your Business Survive and Grow During the Pandemic
Types of COVID-19 Signage
The kind of signage will depend on the type of business you have and the safety guidelines applicable in your location. Here are the most common ones, which can be customized according to your specifications.
Social Distancing Signage
These are reminders for customers to keep at least a distance of six feet between each other and to spend as less time as possible in communal spaces. This signage is suitable to almost any setting: supermarkets, hospitals, offices, pharmacies, and other workplace environments.
This comes in the form of posters, sign holders and display stands, as well as stickers and barricade tape for floors, seats, tables, walls, and windows.
Sneeze Guards
You can add something more to your standard sneeze guard by putting labels and stickers on them, as an additional reminder for customers to lessen the transmission of germs. These can be reminders not to touch the glass or to avoid reaching over the barrier.
This can be used on all types of sneeze guards, be it square or portrait style. You can also have your logo or branding incorporated on your sneeze guards.
PPE Use Signage
If your business will require wearing PPE on a regular basis, then you will benefit from putting PPE signage in your 
establishment. This applies to places in which social distancing is difficult, such as salons, barbershops, and clinics.
Your signage should remind staff to wear a mask (and other equipment such as gloves and suits) and how to use them properly.
In the room where staff change into their PPE, signage on the proper donning, doffing, and disposal of protective equipment will also be immensely helpful.
Hygiene Stations
If you want to encourage your customers to clean their hands more, then making sanitizer readily available is the best way to do it. You can set up hand sanitizer dispenser stands and protective glove stands next to your doorway so customers can enter your store with clean hands.Signs here can indicate how to operate the dispenser, how to wash hands, or how to don gloves properly.
General Safety Signage
Aside from areas mentioned above, these signs are applicable to other environments, such as schools, bus and train stations, manufacturing facilities, and pharmaceutical plants. This covers an extensive range of information, which include:
- Hand sanitizer station sign
- Mandatory hand-washing sign
- Bring your own food and use your own utensils sign
- No handshake sign
- Isolation and bio-hazard area signs
Health, Safety, and So Much More
Now is the time to make your customers and employees feel safe and cared for in your establishment. Let Displays & Holders provide you with the signs that will keep up with the times. We make social distancing signs for all types of business. Visit our website today!
