Despite the political football peppering the UK with ongoing changes daily, we all need to start thinking about how we can adjust our old ways of working to make our working environment safer to staff, visitors and customers.
Social distancing measures are likely to continue well into 2021, so what do you, as an Employer, need to start thinking about now? Employers have a number of common law and statutory duties in relation to health and safety at work, and a starting point will be for all Employers to familiarise themselves with the latest HSE guidance and Government guidance. Detailed guidance has been released for 8 over-branching industries which is a good place to start - you can find those guidelines here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/working-safely-during-coronavirus-covid-19
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With discussions of the relaxation of lockdown becoming more frequent, our thoughts turn to what lingering impact we will see for businesses as they attempt to return to normal.
The lockdown has proved one thing: 1. Which jobs are essential and require an employee to be on-site 2. Which jobs have a larger level of flexibility and could be achieved remotely This isn't something that is going to be easily forgotten by employees and so we need are looking at what employers need to consider when returning to this "new" normal. Having spoken to a number of businesses in recent weeks, we know that many of you are concerned about how you will manage work loads when your offices re-open as most staff will have accrued a significant amount of holiday by the time the current restrictions are eased.
Various professionals in the HR sector are already predicting that the majority of people will be anxious to ensure they have a 'proper' holiday fairly soon after the formal return to office working i.e. September / October, so we have pulled together some ideas on how to plan for and manage this situation going forward that you may find useful:
A number of Employers will have been recruiting or will have recently agreed contracts with new starts.
As we know, most recruitment projects have been postponed until the Autumn (or the next earliest opportunity) as travel has been vastly restricted, the ability to complete any interviews face-to-face has been removed (unless you're open to video conferencing) and it would prove extremely difficult to agree new contracts during this time due to uncertainty. However, what about those Employers who have already agreed new starts? New Employees that were due to start working for you soon and have already resigned from their previous Employer - what can we do about them? We have received a number of questions about the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme or the "80% Scheme" - as it's being referred to.
There have been few details released yet and so we can only offer our opinion at this stage. We will upload guidelines on the scheme as new information is released. The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme means that any Employers that:
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