Without a shadow of a doubt, these are interesting times, and increasingly we are observing that as we progress through the Government's roadmap, conversations are taking place in advance of our 'new norm' to determine whether full time home working is the way to go or more of a hybrid approach (3 days in the office and 2 days of working from home).
Certainly there are pros and cons with both approaches, but by implementing a flexible approach, it could help employers to develop more effective practices which could create a more highly motivated workforce and could dramatically improve productivity.
Employers may be required to review existing or produce new policies on flexible working, such as:
Implementing policies that enable your employees to request flexible working.
State in job advertising that jobs can be done flexibly, attracting more candidates who are looking for flexible roles.
Raise employee awareness of different forms of flexible working, such as, job sharing, and explore how can they be effective in roles that have traditionally been seen as non-flexible.
Develop mutual trust between management team and employees in alternative working arrangements. Support these arrangements with appropriate people management systems and processes.
It is key that before employees return to work that employers conduct risk assessment.
More detailed guidance on this can be obtained from the Health & Executive: https://www.hse.gov.uk/coronavirus/index.htm
We hope that you have found this information useful.
Please make sure that your HR processes and systems support the reopening of your offices.
Flexible working and family friendly policies are available on our brilliant Cloud based HR software HR Pulse.
