Our quarterly forum with over 10 clients from across London and the East of England took place this week on Microsoft Teams. Focusing on discussing current key topics and sharing best practises, we have outlined the key conversations and action points below:
Three months on, we discussed what has changed with our clients’ use of agency staff during this time. We explored key subjects such as ‘what is happening with workers affected by Covid-19 and how are HR overcoming challenges with sickness and self-isolation?’
One London Borough started the conversation having seen an increase in the need for Qualified Social Care workers. Their agency staff spend has increased compared to previous years. A key factor affecting this has been the focus on redeploying workers as opposed to letting placements end. They have also committed to paying workers full pay if they are off work from sickness or due to self-isolation. This ensures that they are supporting their workforce during this challenging time. On a positive note, they have confirmed that there has not been much sickness amongst their workforce.
Another Borough also confirmed that they had not experienced much sickness across their temporary and permanent workforce, which is a good sign. A nearby Council also committed to extending placements so that workers could be redeployed. Interestingly, as a Council, they had not seen a change in spend or workforce during this time.
Altogether, one of the key agreements of ‘changes in agency use’ is that Councils will continue to pay and support workers.
Across the forum, everyone had experienced average worker hours increasing, however annual leave bookings have decreased. This was most notable around bank holidays.
To explore this agenda point, Matrix SCM put the question to the forum, “Are any boroughs planning on imposing mandatory breaks either this Summer or Christmas?” This led to a great discussion around the importance of staff wellbeing and how they need to ensure they are having time to rest by enforcing breaks. Due to the nature of the challenges at the moment, our clients are exploring enforcing Christmas breaks but making them front line exempt. Councils must ensure that they support their workers, help to reduce spend where possible and ensure that front line services for their communities are not affected.
One way we can overcome these challenges is by enforcing annual leave by certain dates. At Matrix SCM, we have ensured that all permanent employees have taken at least 8 days annual leave by the end of June. This offers the ability to carry over 3 days annual leave into 2021.
Here we discovered what challenges our clients are experiencing with working from home; from onboarding permanent members of staff through to ensuring that temporary workers have the equipment they need to deliver from home.
At one Council, they are allowing permanent workers to expense monitors and equipment to ensure they have the tools they need to be able to deliver at home. Another Borough expanded on this by adding that they have set up an online system for workers to order equipment.
An overarching challenge is the transition from working from home to bringing staff back into the office. At the moment, Councils are running risk assessments when staff do come in, however the next step is to ensure that all workers can return to work safely. The key is going to be setting expectations of working in the office by ensuring that remote working is only carried out when necessary. At another Borough, they are carrying out assessments for employees returning to work by highlighting that health is a key factor they need to consider when bringing staff back in.
One Council has been supporting employees by facilitating workers speaking to their line managers if they are struggling. From there, managers can sign them off if needed to work from home. The long-term plan for them is to set up rotas for teams to start coming back into the office and get back into the routine. Two other Boroughs added to this by saying that front line staff are back in the office with no expectation for other staff to return this year at the moment.
Overall, all the Councils agreed that the health and wellbeing of their workforce is going to be key as they work from home, but also in the future as they transition back to working on-site.
At this point we would like to thank our clients for taking part in another forum. Everyone found the discussions useful and it is great to share best practice with the HR community.
We hope you found this overview interesting. If you have any questions about the topics discussed above, please feel free to reach out via our contact form below.