MARKakaJIM
Contrary Mary
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2010
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I think it's more that companies have been told to re-open.
The message is still to work from home wherever it is possible, but now they've put a bit of a squeeze on employers to find ways to open their premises back up for work rather than mothballing everything and waiting for everything to blow over. They still have to be able to provide a safe working environment that complies with the distancing guidelines so I imagine very few places will be able to get back to anything like 100% production for a good while yet but I see it as a message to get people to try and do as much as they can, in terms of getting back to normal, rather than perhaps being overly cautious and putting too much pressure on the furlough scheme as a result.
It's going to vary from workplace to workplace and even individual to individual within those workplaces, I know you have a high risk family member which makes it difficult for you by proxy where it perhaps wouldn't be an issue if you were single and living alone so personal circumstances can add a new layer of complication on top of the job/workplace specific constraints. When I went into the office for a day the other week, absolute ghost town at the minute as probably 95% are working from home vast majority of the time, a couple of the building management guys were walking around assessing the size/capacity of all the individual rooms so they could get an idea of the safe working capacity if/when they look to encourage more people back into the office. There are 3 big offices along our corridor of virtually identical size, first has five people in it which is probably about right, ours has just the two of us but three spare desks that people drop onto every now and again but then the third has eight people crammed in there! So there'd be some re-distribution of people to make it all workable, they could retain some flexibility working from home or people frequently visit sites so just a bit of diary co-ordination where possible would help spread out the load on the office, add in some extra cleaning provision etc. and you're making some decent steps to get us back to something close to normal.
I've still been visiting some of our live sites through this and seen other measures they've taken to provide similar assurance, originally trialed a rotational working from home on some bigger sites but site management is particularly difficult when you're 50 miles away from the work being done so they've got additional cabins in some instances now to space everyone out more, cut down on other disciplines visiting site where possible to stop them cluttering places up. We've replaced biometric turnstiles, fingerprint scanners, with additional security guards manually signing people in and out to remove a common surface from a congested area. I've seen sites buying marquees and furniture to create additional canteens, originally tried encouraging people to eat in their cars or providing outdoor seating but they're not always practical.
It's all risk management at the end of the day, priority is still very much work from home wherever it is possible, second to that I see the onus on employers to adapt their facilities/practices to comply with guidance and look to get as many of staff back into work where they are unable to work from home, I don't think anyone should be forced into doing something they consider unsafe for themselves or their relatives but at the moment there doesn't appear to be much guidance on how those situations are handled. Thankfully in most cases I've heard of the individuals within those situations are being reasonable, like yourself with your boss furloughing you to protect those you live with and hopefully he's able to continue with that if you can't be provided with an working environment you feel safe enough to return to, similar to the guy I share an office with and his vulnerable son, they were told to isolate as a family unit as soon as the virus spread to Nottingham so they've not left the house for nearly 3 months now and I wouldn't expect him back until there's a vaccine or other such definitive measure against the virus.
