Department of Health and Social Care launch We Offer Testing To Our Staff endorsement scheme
On Monday 10 May, the Department of Health and Social Care launched the We Offer Testing To Our Staff (WOTTOS) endorsement scheme, which is a free voluntary promotional scheme for businesses who are participating in the government’s free COVID workplace testing programme by offering twice weekly testing to their employees.
The announcement states that displaying:
“either a physical and/or virtual sticker offers employees and customers greater reassurance and confidence that participating firms are going above and beyond their safer workplace legal duties, to improve the safety of their premises for their staff and customers.”
To be eligible, businesses must be:
- using the free government supplied COVID-19 test kits, either for workplace testing or Workforce Collect (home testing) and
- have registered before 12 April with the online portal for ordering test kits and subsequently self-declare their involvement
There is no minimum size requirement but businesses accessing testing through other routes such as local community testing sites are unable to use the scheme as the intention is to “showcase to employees and customers that an organisation is directly offering testing to their staff.”
The scheme does not currently cover businesses who pay privately for other validated testing programmes, but it is the government’s intention to expand it to cover such schemes “in due course”.
For businesses who signed up to the workplace testing programme by 12 April, the promotional material is available from the online portal where organisations order their test kits. The Department of Health also plans to distribute printed notices to those taking part in the scheme.
It is up to businesses to decide where to display the notices, but this could be at the front of a shop, at checkout areas, on company websites, or on social media.
