What is HR Planning for the Return to Work?

As the UK starts to come out of lockdown, we feel that we are in a good position

Flexibility around working hours

We chatted to our CIPD Level 7 student Sarah Hardy, a Recruitment Manager at Bailie Group Business Services, to find out how she’s managing these changing times at work – from employee engagement to bringing staff back from furlough.

Throughout the pandemic our organisation has been very careful to stick to the government guidance to ensure that we are always doing the right thing by our people. We have planned the return to work for some time now, ensuring that the needs and feelings of all staff are taken into consideration. We have run a couple of surveys since the first lockdown and findings from this have been used to inform our thinking.

As the UK starts to come out of lockdown, we feel that we are in a good position. Whilst our offices have remained open throughout for those who need to work from an office only recently, we have started welcoming people back in any significant numbers. All of our offices are covid secure and operate strict social distancing. To facilitate this, we have created an online booking system that can accommodate office capacity. In addition, we are encouraging the take up of hybrid working for those who can do so. We plan to operate this on a trial basis to see what works and what doesn’t until the end of 2021 before we make any changes to people’s terms & conditions.

In addition due to the location of our offices we are ensuring that there is flexibility around working hours, so we operate a working day of 07.30am – 19.30pm, this gives individuals flexibility to travel on public transport at quieter times as well as to ensure that they don’t lose any of the perks of working from home gained during the pandemic ie going to the gym, school run etc.