In a recent webinar, Roger Pellew from Hackney Council provided some great insight into how they are overcoming the challenging effects of Covid-19 on their temporary resource. We have compiled some of this knowledge below to help share best practise.

Insight from Hackney Council

The first challenge Hackney Council faced was understanding the policy around furlough. Initial guidance from the Government was not clear. Only through subsequent guidance and working with Matrix SCM it became clear that they would not be furloughing workers. Instead, they would be supporting them with a salary through this time. “From Hackney Council’s perspective, what we have done is very strategic by hosting weekly meetings to ensure that we support our workforce in response to Covid-19.”

Supporting Agency Workers

Looking after their workforce during this time was pivotal. At Hackney Council, they utilise a large number of agency workers, so it was important that there was a strategy in place to support them. The first step for that was to see if they could redeploy workers. Managers could then identify potential closures of service areas; shielding workers or staff suffering from Covid-19. They have been supporting workers through the 80% support scheme. For Hackney Council, they found the documentation from Matrix SCM very helpful in terms of how they identified workers that need support, updated their rates, sign off the change, update the contracts and processed everything through CR.Net.

Reporting on the Effects of Covid-19

Reports help Hackney Council understand what their spend is, how many workers are affected and the reasons behind worker changes and orders. Through CR.Net, Hackney Council can access these reports as and when they need to; sharing them with relevant stakeholders like the senior management when needed. These reports are vital for decision-making during the crisis and will also continue to help Hackney Council in the future when they look back and need to review what the effects of Covid-19 were on their workforce.

Extending Employee Assistance Programs

Hackney Council have also explored other ways to support their agency workers during this time. They recognised the difficulties and challenges that their agency workers face. With many of them being front-line workers, it is important for Hackney Council to help, so they have extended their employee assistant provision and offer counselling sessions to both workers and their families.

Unqualified Social Care

One of the key areas that was a problem was Unqualified Social Care. Hackney Council recognised they needed more workers to cover them due to an increase in demand. Matrix SCM helped them through the process by hosting meetings with the Council, Service Managers and the supply chain to help. Through CR.Net and the supply chain, we identified agency workers that could help with the increased demand and got them on-site to support Hackney Council through this challenging time.

Watch the Full Webinar

This insight is a snippet from a webinar we ran with the PPMA. The full webinar covered how Matrix SCM have been working with over 9 Councils across London to support them through these challenging times. You can watch the full webinar in the video below: