Balancing roles at home

Working from home

With many colleagues now working from home, we have pulled together some resources along with creating a guide to support colleagues as we appreciate this will be a very different experience for each individual.

Have you completed your risk assessment? All employees working from home are required to complete a self-assessment in accordance with the SHE Form 74a Risk Assessment so that you can self-determine the suitability and safety of your home work area and any remedial action that needs to be taken. Once the risk assessment has been completed please email this back to your Line Manager.

We recently issued a Working from Home Guide, which aims to support you and help reassure you as we all get used to this new way of working. The guide covers a range of areas such as:

Mental and physical wellbeing

Learning at home

Managing your time

Taking a break

Parenting at home and much more

As we have been working from home for longer than originally anticipated, please remember that you can collect any additional equipment you normally use from your place of work (i.e. chair, lumber support, footrest), as deemed necessary to carry out your job and ensure that your home working environment is safe.

The divisional offices and GSC will be closed for the foreseeable future, so please take time to review page 16 of the Working from Home Guide as this provides information on how to ensure that your equipment is positioned correctly. If you have any queries relating to the safe set up of your workstation please contact your SHE Manager.

It is also important to ensure that you take regular breaks and exercise, visit the NHS website for some exercises that you can do at your home workstation.

You can also view an ‘Introduction to Working Remotely’ video provided by our partner, Unum.

Look out for updates or visit MyLearning for details of webinars available on topics such as ‘Managing your team's return to work’ and ‘Working remotely’.

Balancing roles - Flexible/agile working

We've recently published our new Flexible and Agile Working Policy to support our aims of becoming a more diverse and inclusive employer. It is important that a positive approach to flexible/agile working is embraced at all levels, as it is an integral part of how we operate.

We are committed to actively trying to achieve a positive outcome for any requests to work flexibly or in an agile way that meets the needs of both the employee and the company, recognising that the operational requirements of the Company will take precedence and therefore flexible/agile working options will not always be appropriate for all roles.

In addition, in order to further help and support employees to achieve positive health and wellbeing and work-life balance we encourage employees whose job enables them to, to work from home where possible. This could potentially be on a permanent basis or for a number of days per week.

We recognise and appreciate that for any employees in roles which can be carried out from home, they may also need to spend some time in the office. Any employees who attend their office must strictly adhere to the social distancing and PPE requirements in place.