In a panel discussion, we explored the practicalities of Workforce Challenges and Social Distancing with leading members of the HR Community. Here we dive into the challenges that we are facing and how together we can overcome them.
Public Health England have released materials and guidance around social distancing, however the reality is that we must be pragmatic about delivery.
“You can’t social distance effectively if you are a refuge collector, a refuge van is 1.7m, so you can’t keep 2 meters apart.” Karen Grave, President of the PPMA.
Effective social distancing involves a combination of multiple factors, such as PPE and how you design your workforce workplaces to name a couple. The context is going to be king on all this, as we explore the practicalities of implementing social distancing in situations that normally would not be a problem such as staff using lifts.
“The reality is, that most of the PPMA membership, isn’t looking at bringing the workforce back until September, to give us time to pilot approaches to see how effective they are.” Karen Grave, President of the PPMA.
Everyone agreed that the phased approach is going to be key to ensure that we can test the different social distancing initiatives and ensure they are effective before the whole workforce comes back.
The first step for this is going to be bringing back staff who may be at home but not working, as physically they cannot deliver their jobs at home. A key priority for organisations is going to be supporting their front-line and key workers. Social workers in particular are a concern, as in most cases their role has to be delivered face to face.
The reality is that everybody that can work from home will continue to do so over the summer. Our clients are starting to introduce some workers coming in across the office, however that is likely to be an exception as opposed to the rule. A challenge we are going to be facing as we phase bringing workers back to the office is ensuring they are confident and comfortable coming in.
Initially, virtually everyone went home. Everyone that could work from home did and will continue to do so. As a Council, Lancashire have a large focus on social, adult and children care. Luckily, they have not experienced major issues with PPE, however social distancing in elderly people’s care homes has been a challenge.
Going back to Karen’s point about refuge, Lancashire created an appointment system, so that the community could book in when they wanted to drop off refuse to ensure that social distancing could be abided too.
For existing staff, County Hall are putting up signs for social distancing on how to use stairways and lifts. Exploring staggered starts, to reduce employees arriving at work at the same time. Utilising tools such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Skype a lot more as they have got used to a different way of working.
At Lancashire they have a high volume of agency workers who have been provided equipment so that they can deliver at home. Initiatives like this have ensured the Council have not seen a massive impact of people not being able to carry out their jobs at home. Around 4,000 workers have been re-deployed to front line roles to help manage the Covid-19 outbreak.
The strategy now is that they are standing these teams down to understand how they can introduce them back to their existing roles. There are various lessons learn and teams that have been set-up, so the Council are now focusing on the exit strategy to transition back to business as usual.
As our Country is now beginning to transition to business as usual where possible, the panel have agreed that they have all faced similar challenges and there are various lessons learnt that they will be utilising moving forward and should there be a second outbreak. They are all now working on an exit strategy as they transition back to business as usual.
If you would like to learn more or have questions, please reach out below or click here to watch the full panel discussion for further insight.