UK Lockdown – Working from Home
With the UK now essentially in lockdown, those of us who are able to are now working from home.
We’ve compiled a few things to think about make sure that your work force stays healthy and productive:
- Are your employees fit to work? Take the time to look after and check in on your employees and make sure they are fit to work.
- Keeping your staff safe from transmission in the office – if some employees are needed in the office, follow government guidelines!
- Prepare for this lockdown/quarantine period to last for several weeks.
- Be considerate of school closures and the knock-on effect on parents.
Working from home:
- Do all your employees have the capacity to work from home?
- If they are using personal equipment, is it fit for purpose?
- You may want to consider issuing laptops or desktop equipment for them to work from home (this will also be good in the long term).
- Will they need remote access?
- Be security conscious.
Equipment:
Putting aside the obvious, laptop and desktop etc, there is more equipment needed for some to work from home.
- Webcams – becoming hard to come by, but your phone has a built-in one that can be used with several apps, thing like Teams, Skype and WhatsApp all integrate with your phones camera.
- Phones – can you get by using mobiles or is a different system needed? Some hosted VoIP systems allow your desk phone to be taken home and plugged in there; some systems have a mobile app which lets your desk extension ring on your mobile.
Networks:
- Is your employee’s home internet reliable enough for them to work from?
- Do they need additional networking equipment?
- Do you have the appropriate licences to remotely work?
Security Concerns:
Fake-news and disinformation are rife, and scammers are always looking to take advantage of people’s fear, and COVID-19 is no exception.
Phishing scams are already going around, so remind your employees to be cautious about clicking links or opening attachments to avoid a potential security breach.
These are just to highlight a few things to help your employees work from home. If you need advice about working from home or another aspect of remote working, please feel free to give us a call. But most importantly, if you can, stay home and save lives!
More information on the government website here:
