Staff workplace questionnaire

Thank you to everyone for your support in adjusting to the new ways of working over the last few months.

As you know we have now moved into phase 2 of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which involves thinking about restarting some of the business as usual activities that were paused as a result of COVID.

The Government guidance remains that everyone should work from home, unless they cannot work from home. The CCG is following this guidance and is therefore not asking everyone to return to the office for the time being.

We will continue to follow the Government guidance, but even when a green light is given for everyone to return to work we are not expecting everyone to return at once. Firstly, this is due to limitations on social distancing and secondly due to various responsibilities colleagues may have at home. A return to the office will be a gradual process and we expect a mix of office and homeworking to continue for some time.

However, in the meantime, we need to prepare for an eventual return to the office. To allow for this the buildings at Spencer Close need to be modified to keep people safe. This will involve following guidance from the Health and Safety Executive and also the advice from our Infection Prevention and Control colleagues. We will be carrying out detailed risk assessments of the buildings in order to implement any changes required, such as installing extra hand sanitisers, introducing protection screens where required and displaying signage.

But this isn’t just about ensuring Spencer Close is safe and fit for purpose. An important part of the assessment is to:

• establish an understanding of your ability to continue working from home for a prolonged period of time
• identify your individual needs around this
• identify any concerns you may have.

This applies to everyone working in the CCG. Some of you may be keen to come back to work in the office, whereas some of you may have reservations due to travel and transport, social distancing or caring responsibilities at home.

To get a proper understanding of this, we would appreciate it if you could complete this short questionnaire by 5pm on Friday 29 May 2020.

The survey will be identifiable to enable us to take your individual circumstances and thoughts into account in our planning. However, your response will not be widely shared. Jeneva Allison and the HR team will treat it as confidential and will be happy to discuss any concerns you might raise with you directly.

If there are any questions in the survey you would rather not answer in that way, then please discuss them with Jeneva, your line manager, director or Andrew Geldard.

As the situation develops, we may ask you to take part in future questionnaires to make sure we continue to create plans with your input.

If you have any specific concerns you wish to raise immediately, there are several ways in which you can share your thoughts or access further information on support that is available. You can:

• speak to your line manager
• speak to a colleague or your Staff Partnership Group representative
• speak to David Wallace, our Freedom to Speak Up Champion
• email the Communications team. Your comments will remain anonymous if you wish
• email Jeneva Allison, HR Business Partner
• explore the health and wellbeing support tools and resources on AskHUE

In the meantime, please be assured the CCG will continue to follow the government guidance – which, again, currently remains that everyone should work from home, unless they cannot work from home.

We just want to start preparing to reopen the offices at some point, albeit in a different way, and make sure you have all the help and support you need to continue working from home as well.