Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic we have followed and, in some instances, gone beyond Government advice by moving to home working where possible earlier than advised. As we emerge in a series of phases from lockdown, our position remains the same: everyone that can work from home should continue to do so.
We recognise that to deliver some of our services we need to be face-to-face with our clients and learners, therefore, we are gradually re-opening our office/training spaces to enable this to happen in a safe way. More colleagues will be returning to our sites that have reopened and more colleagues will be visiting client locations to enable us to deliver our services over the coming weeks.
Please note, however, that you should not return to any of our buildings or client locations unless asked to do so by your manager, and if asked, you will need to have read and understood our latest guidance.
This next phase of living with COVID-19 should be transitory. It brings with it many unknowns and we expect Government policy will need to change at short notice, with the possibility of local lockdowns, test and isolate impacts and other measures coming into and out of force.
While there are many unknowns, what we do know is:
- Working from home where able to do so is the best way to reduce the risk of COVID-19 for ourselves and those we are close to.
- With around only 25% of our pre-COVID occupancy levels available due to social distancing measures put in place, we have very little office capacity for colleagues and clients. This means the fewer people we have in the office, the easier it will be to maintain social distancing, keeping those who need to be there safer.
- Our operating environment will be even more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous than normal. Removing uncertainties where we can will increase our ability to plan and make us more agile and resilient.
- Many of the new ways of working which colleagues have established during lockdown will become embedded in GC’s delivery models, e.g. greater use of online collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams, Skype and Zoom so that colleagues can engage regardless of their location. In this next phase of living with COVID, and even in a hopeful post-COVID world, we will maintain these behaviours so that we increase our ongoing organisational agility and resilience.
- Lockdown, as we know, has accelerated our deployment of digital services, demand for which is likely to remain high and as such we will continue to develop our digital capabilities further in order to meet the needs of our clients and commissioners.
To this end, we will continue to operate our default position of working from home where possible for the foreseeable future and at least for the rest of the year, this allows us to maximise safety and reduce uncertainty where we can.
We are developing a plan to identify what our future needs are for office and training space and how this can be utilised to support the new ways of working developed by yourselves and clients. Your initial input via the recent staff survey has been important to this but is only one way in which you will have an opportunity to shape your future working environment.
Within this context we have made the decision to take advantage of a lease break opportunity, enabling us to vacate the First Floor of Lee House (excluding the Sunshine Suite). In addition to the new working practices, many of which we will want to embed long-term, it was important to realise this opportunity to take a substantial mid-term cost out of the business (as part of the cost reduction measures set out in my recent webinar), especially given the uncertainty over this period. This change will provide us with more flexibility about how we organise our activities going forward and we will be engaging further with you over the coming months as we evolve to the new ‘normal’.
While the recent staff survey told us that the vast majority of you were happy to work from home, we understand that some of you find this more challenging and I’d encourage you to speak to your line manager should you have any concerns. We are also aware that for some of you to continue to work from home for this length of time, there will be a need for some additional equipment. We will initially be providing more IT equipment to colleagues who identified needs in the recent staff survey, commencing with keyboards and mice, followed by additional screens where warranted by impact on performance improvement.
As throughout this pandemic, our priority has been your safety, the sustainability of our organisation and supporting our clients. Retaining and developing the positive new ways of working which we’ve adopted, along with implementing the measures already outlined, is key to our recovery and building back better.