Discussion on Return to Work Considerations

6 May 2020

What are the key factors we need to take into consideration for employers as we prepare to return to the workplace over the coming weeks?

The Government have promised to release some guidelines on Sunday around easing lockdown measures and helping people get back to work in the coming weeks. They have already been in talks with business leaders and Trade Unions.

The measures will look at people safely returning in the workplace, and I’m going to be putting a lot of information around how to do that here on my website, but I am confident that the guidance will continue to encourage people to work from home, where they are able to do so.

The measures will be giving a lot of guidance about re-opening certain settings such as restaurants and hotels, factories, people working in other people’s home and doing deliveries, as well as guidance around shops and offices. The key requirement for this, along with following all of the relevant Government guidance is to do a risk assessment for each workplace setting.

But also remember that your duty of care as an employer continues regardless of where the employee is working, be it in a home or a workplace setting, and it also covers their mental and psychological wellbeing. So think about that – what can you be doing as an employer that makes a difference? Employers have the opportunity to have a really pivotal role right now in their employees' lives.

Amongst other things, you need to consider:

• people travelling to and from work and how they can safely do this
• putting in place or continuing with the higher level of personal and workplace hygiene measures
  • for instance having hand-sanitiser stations
  • making sure high traffic areas are cleaned regularly
• and how social distancing can be practised once people return to the workplace – so this might be about
  • phasing returns
  • staggering start and finish times and break times
  • having different shift patterns
  • and reviewing the layouts so that people can maintain appropriate distances o and putting in additional screening

But also think about those people continuing to work from home and have they got the right set-up that going to help them be engaged and productive and is not going to lead to them experiencing physical and even mental and emotional difficulties?

For those people still working from home, as well as those you might be onboarding or re-boarding think about how to help staff readjust when they come back to work, get them back up to speed and how to boost morale. So you might want to consider:

• Clear action planning for key priorities in the workplace
• Keeping in touch with off-site employees including considering their welfare, mental and physical health and their personal security
• Employee engagement – continue with your virtual team meetings and try to make it video contact, you might even want to set up a Friday afternoon virtual ‘cheers’ type chat, but also make sure you have the one-to-one meetings where you can really ask an individual “how are you? How are you coping?”
• Managing your employee concerns – share with them what measures you are putting in place in the workplace so that they can be confident you are following your duty of care as their employer

For the future:

• Think about lessons we’ve learnt from this – if you don’t already have a business continuity plan then it is something you should consider and we’ll all now need to be adding in pandemics to that plan so look at what lessons we’ve learnt from this
• And future planning – what is the new normal for your business?

Remember, we’re all in the same storm but we’re not all in the same boat.