After the initial encouragement to return to the workplace, the emphasis is now back on working from home for those who can – and this is most likely to be the case for the foreseeable future.
Our Rebalance – New Ways of Working Toolkit is designed to help businesses ensure the fundamentals of good people management are followed as working practices change.
If your people return to the workplace, you will want to make sure they are safe, comfortable and reassured that you have effective Covid-secure measures in place. If some are continuing to work remotely, then you must ensure that your business is equipped to effectively manage and support them.
The Toolkit is a comprehensive tailored package of guidance, policies and templates that will help you and your people adapt to this changed way of working. You will get the opportunity to have a one-to-one discussion with a HR expert who will provide you with support and answer any questions you or your managers have.
Here’s some of the key areas the Toolkit covers:
Promote wellbeing and good mental health
Employers have a legal responsibility to protect the health and safety of employees, whether they are at home or in the workplace. A person’s mental health can suffer from isolation and long periods away from colleagues, so we’ll work with you to consider how you can create the means for good communication and collaboration for those working remotely, and in the workplace. This is important for work purposes but also for those informal catch ups and chats that are a key part of the working day for many people, and a key contributor to mental health and wellbeing.
Flexible and home working policy
We anticipate that businesses will see an increase in requests for flexible working arrangements over the coming months – and these will be more difficult to turn down. Flexible working could cover a huge range of changes to working days and hours and requests could also be made to work from home, or elsewhere remotely, for some or all of your employees working hours. To help, we’ll provide a homeworking policy which you will find useful as you implement home working agreements for any or all of your team.
Travel guidance and policies
While it’s easier for employees to ban business travel, employees may wish to go abroad for holidays – sometimes to high risk areas. While businesses should not ask why an employee may choose to travel to a location on the quarantine list, a duty of care still exists, and employers need to ensure travel is safe. You should also consider how flexible you want to be if employees want to cancel or change their holidays because of Coronavirus. We’ll work with you to develop a travel policy that includes managing staff holiday requests and work travel arrangements.
Find further details on our Rebalance Toolkit here and please get in touch if you have any questions on the process.