Covid-19 update – book a team space

  • 28/07/2020
  • Mark Hughes

Last week I outlined that we would continue to work from home wherever possible for the rest of the year. This is an approach we believe is important to enable social distancing for those who need to deliver our face-to-face services and to help us ensure your continuing safety.

With this in mind, we will be following up responses from the recent staff survey and start to provide additional equipment to those who need it. We are working with each business area to establish requirements and help you to continue to work from home as comfortably and effectively as possible.

While working from home remains our core approach, I am very much aware that many of you are eager to see your colleagues and have some much-needed face-to-face interaction. Therefore, we are providing you with the option of using designated meeting spaces for face-to-face team meetings if you would welcome the opportunity to do so.

From Monday 3rd August, colleagues will be able to hold team meetings in our sites which remain open. For Churchgate and Lee House this will be limited to the areas below and the smaller meeting rooms will not be available to book.

Meetings can be booked in the usual way however each team meeting will require an organiser to ensure the guidelines are adhered to. This will involve each meeting participant completing and sharing a pre-meeting checklist with the organiser.

Please note that within Churchgate and Lee House we are proposing to make the following 3 areas available for larger team meetings:  

  • Meeting rooms 5 and 6 for a maximum number of 18 team members to use.
  • The Sunshine Suite for a maximum number of 12 team members to use.
  • The first-floor kitchen and meeting area for a maximum number of 14 team members to use.

You will be able to book a two-hour slot (either am or pm) via Talos, our room booking system. The facilities team will be on hand for any support and all areas will be cleaned before and after each session. Before you enter buildings, you must have your temperature tested at reception.

If you are coming into the office for a team meeting please ensure that you are only use the building for this purpose.  You should not occupy the wider accommodation space in the building pre, or post meeting and you should not access any other areas of the office including going to your locker, if you have one.  If you would like to collect your belongings from your locker, you can do so by booking a time slot to come into the office.

All sites that have reopened are covered by our GC Risk Assessment and are Covid-19 safe however it is important that before returning to the office you read our employee guidance first. We have also produced this short video to show you the safety measures we have put in place across our sites.

Please remember to follow the government guidance on staying safe outside your home and remember your mandatory face mask if you are travelling by public transport, or using retail facilities in the vicinity. 

I wanted to come back to you regarding the recent discussion around temporary salary reductions.  Again, I would like to say how overwhelming the extent and speed of the positive response from you has been and confirm that the salary reductions proposed in June will be implemented in your August pay for a 6-month period.  We are also drawing to a close on the redundancy consultation process and as I said at the time, this is not a position I ever wanted us to be in and like many organisations we have had some difficult choices to make to ensure the financial stability of the Group.

In my last email I noted that we have been sprinting a marathon for the last 4 months and I know many will be feeling the effects of that sustained effort under challenging circumstances. Whilst options for our holiday destinations have been reduced please do use the wonderful British summer to take some annual leave to recharge and have a well-earned rest over the next few weeks.

Lastly, I’d like to say something more about the Black Lives Matter movement and the need to address the issues rightly raised. I recognise I have been relatively silent on this, not because of a lack of interest but, because I have been taking time to reflect on my own thinking and engage with a wide range of individuals (within GC and externally) and other organisations. In particular SMT and our Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) group have been engaged on this and the EDI team have made a series of recommendations including publishing key EDI statistics, enhancing our approach to recruitment and instituting a leadership development programme (to address the particularly acute under-representation in our management tiers) that we are currently developing. Please be assured that specific actions are being developed and will be shared. If you would like to contribute ideas, please reach out to anyone in the EDI team or myself.