As many of us have experienced, 2020 has been the year of ‘working from home!’ Many companies are now considering a more permanent move to remote working and are starting to think about how this will affect their business productivity, people strategy and the well-being of their work force. Whether your staff have taken to remote working really well, or if they and the organisation have found that this has presented many challenges, serious consideration needs to be taken when undertaking a more permanent change to the way that you have always worked. This fact sheet accompanies the Remote-Working video in the Resources section of our website. These tools are designed to assist you in giving serious consideration to home working and how it will affect your work force.
Remote-Working Questionnaire:
Before you start to think about how you roll out a more permanent approach to home working, it would be good to understand how your work force have adapted to the challenges that working remotely can bring. You can find our Remote-Working Questionnaire in the Resources section of our website. Asking your employees to complete this will help to inform you when putting together your remote working policy. The questions can be amended to suit your organisation.
Remote-Working Policy:
Things to consider including in your remote working policy:
- Will your home working policy be open to everyone?
- Will there be a criteria for applicants and how will your workforce apply.
- How will you communicate who it is open to and the reasons for this?
- Consider a variation of terms if what you are implementing causes differences in employment contractors for your home workers (e.g. place / hours of work).
- Company / Personal equipment – What equipment will you provide your employees with to allow them to perform their jobs? Are you going to ask that they don’t use their own equipment?
- Contact with manager – Will this be a fluid arrangement or will you insist upon catch up’s at specific times throughout the day / week / month?
- Utilities Costs – Will you contribute towards the use of gas / electric / water for your homeworkers?
- Data Protection – Will your DP policy need to be amended to support home working? Will you be providing a lockable cabinet for any confidential documentation or issuing guidance around confidential information? How will you encourage your home workers not to give out their personal information re. location to their clients / business contacts etc.
- Health and Safety – Will have a home workers / lone workers risk assessment be performed? Will this also include an audit on work space / DSE usage etc.
- Working hours – Will this be a flexible arrangement? Will you insist on set hours worked each day or will the weekly number of hours just need to fulfilled at a time that works for the employee?
- First Aid – Will you put your remote workers through some kind of online first aid course? Will you provide a small first aid kit for personal use? Hazardous substances – Will you offer guidance on this for your remote workers.
Other considerations:
- Different employees, different needs – How will you ensure that each of your employees feels well supported in their new working environment?
- Company Culture – How can you ensure that your company culture is a strong and defined as it would be if your teams were all working in the same place, together?
- Mental Health – Are you leaders / managers / supervisors trained to recognise signs of poor mental health? How do you support your leaders in this?
- Some of your staff may find it hard to switch off at the end of the work day or want to prove that they are working, by over working. How will you guide and support on this.
For further help and support, reach out to The BlackCat Talent team who can offer further guidance.
