Physical Set-up

We started by surveying team members on Wednesday 11th March about their capacity to work in their homes, covering the following areas:

• Desk space

• Quiet to work

• Internet connection

• Chair (for back health)

• Second screen requirements

• Mobile signal

• Using personal phone

• Challenges if schools close

WFH Readiness Survey

Here’s a link to the survey we sent - an updated version because we ended up having to do a follow up survey to get some extra information the following day.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1vEKsINUcpFNkygpPRhUMcVw4h2rl0m6Yt7cCTrhCHns/edit?usp=sharing

This allowed us to see how far away we were from having the physical set-up to be able to all work from home.

The outcomes for us were that connectivity is not an issue, but back health would be as 14 people did not have appropriate chairs to work from. Of these only 4 were unable to collect their own chair from the office - and 12 people volunteered to help drive chairs, so we should all be fine.

Screens might prove trickier, as ours are on clamps - but we’re working on a plan!

Health & Safety

This is a screenshot from HSE about the responsibility of employers when employees are working from home - link here

My interpretation of this is that we don't have to ask everyone to do a full risk assessment, because we're considered low risk.
But what we have done is:

• check people have appropriate desks, supportive chairs and make arrangements when they don't

• remind people to be careful when lifting their chairs or other heavy items to set up their working environment

• we're working on the second-screen situation and should have it solved within a day or two

• all our laptop chargers, screens and other electronics have been PAT tested recently (thankfully!)

• added a page on H&S to our internal WFH policy site, which mentions trip hazzards, desk set-up and using common sense

We'll keep this page updated as we have more learnings in the coming days and weeks.