To think some have been given the nod?

[whatnow41]

DH works in an industry that has close links to both healthcare and hospitality. Since March he has noticed a pattern of certain very large customers (national chains of pubs or big brands) seeming to know and respond to lockdown and tier information a few days in advance.

In March I was working as a manager for an organisation that supplied call centre workers for the NHS Covid line. We definitely had some kind of a nod. We were told to get as many people as possible WFH in the 2 weeks before lockdown was announced. Literally getting brand new staff in, trained in a day, and out the door again to WFH.

I now work for a call centre again within a very key industry. Beginning of last week, despite our whole call centre being key workers, we began prep for WFH. The management have always said we can't support staff well enough to support customers on a WFH basis due to tenure. 95% staff have less than 3 months as it's a new site.

The positioning statement from our ceo last week was that we were just doing some business readiness planning "in case Boris announces increased levels of restrictions".

Now on the BBC news channel Boris is warning restrictions may be increased.

Some people get the nod, don't they?

@finkking

Yes & No, head teachers certainly don't seem to be getting much warning.

certainly not in my neck of the woods in Wales.

DH who works for an big important firm in the city was told in Nov/Dec to not expect to be back in the office before May ☹️

[quote justasking111]@annevonkleve if it gives you comfort to think that government departments and big companies do not know in advance and helps you sleep better at night then that is fine you worry less than those in the know.[/quote]
Ha ha like you are going to persuade me that this government has anything like a plan.

I agree larger companies have business continuity policies, but I think it was accident rather than design that my employer had just given out laptops to everyone at the end of February - it was simply fortuitous timing. I have been working from home since March 9th with the exception of one day in October.

Agree it's not a conspiracy though.

Surely it's just forward planning/contingency. My workplace suggested people worked from home before official lockdown so they could check that the servers wouldn't crash. Because Italy and Spain were ahead of us, we could see which way things were going

They also leak things to the press to prep the public.

@Orf1abc

Local council Comms. Here. We were told a couple of days before doing into tier 4 so we could get Comms. Prepped.

Our local council leaders get zero communication from the government. However they've called every decision ahead of time, based on local public health data and looking at what is going on elsewhere. Also by looking at what the government has leaked to certain newspapers.

same here. I work for the LA in older peoples services. I'm 99% certain our senior management didn't know we were going into Tier 4 until it was announced. They were prepared for it though.

And if anyone is looking for one of these mysterious 'nods' - here it is

If you sign up for yougov surveys, I find the questions they ask on there are a fairly reliable indicator of what policy the government will next announce, as it will have been surveyed on there a few days before.

My dc school was in the open list of London Tier 4 schools on Friday, did I expect that to change? Yep. Did it? Yep.

Most people I know didn't see the tier 4 restrictions coming in the middle of December.

I was surprised they banned Christmas day mixing tbh. Not because it wasn't needed but because of compliance. In my part of London it was the same as every other Christmas, all of a sudden the roads are dead & I can park outside my house! So clearly people didn't comply.

That's nonsense, there is no way the government intended to lock down two weeks before they actually did!

My DB is a deputy head, he said the government were trying to scrape through to Easter for closures but mass illness, low attendance forced their hand.

I think for every occasion in which someone has warned of restrictions which have come to fruition there are several examples of warnings not being true.

It doesn't take much to hedge your bets, and any decent business leader should have business continuity plans. If you can sensibly deduce that further restrictions are more than slightly likely then you implement your plan to get ahead of the situation and avoid a disruption in service.

I'm very close with the head of adult care at our local council and they don't know. He was quite shocked when we moved go tier 4 this week as they'd been prepping for a huge roll out of rapid testing instead.

All those who are saying they were told to WFH prior to lockdown- wasn't that the advice, though? Or am I remembering wrong?

I thought so

@ComtesseDeSpair Rubbish, assuming people want staff in the major inner London hospitals to get to work? Or is Boris going to organise cars and drivers for all these staff

I also think the gradual shutting of things/advice given was instead of the shock of telling us we were locking down in one fell swoop.

Yes I think they like to lay crumbs down. From memory by the time lockdown came people were desperate for it & only too happy to stick to it.

Plenty of us were ringing alarm bells and shrieking at the top of our lungs about the coming disaster on here back in early February

What do you think should have been done in early February?

certainly not in my neck of the woods in Wales.

Plenty of London schools didn't know they were not opening this week on Friday.

[quote Rosehip10]@ComtesseDeSpair Rubbish, assuming people want staff in the major inner London hospitals to get to work? Or is Boris going to organise cars and drivers for all these staff [/quote]
I think you’ve misread my point, which was that clearly some of the “nods” people claim they know have been given to companies are patently not true - such as all the posters who just before Christmas said their friend / DH / auntie who knows these things through being tipped off by work had told them we’d be in full lockdown within hours with the entire transport network closed to all, were wrong (or telling porkies.)

@ComtesseDeSpair Mis-read your post. Apologies.

I don't know, I think it's more that they can see the stats for themselves. The government are always quite slow and reluctant to have lockdowns. Before the lockdown in March the trains had emptied out quite a bit in the week before because people were deciding for themselves they didn't like the way things were going and working from home where they could.

I expect some big companies / key industries do, because they'll meet with CS etc.

But otherwise, it's just planning for which way the wind is blowing - I work for a tiny company, we could see lockdowns coming and planned for the worst.

Some changes were predictable. Our area's cases didn't go down in November and cases were increasing exponentially in December so we were obviously going the same way as London but they were slow to implement the changes because they wanted people spending in non-essential retailers for as long as possible.

A lot of people have been calling for lockdown since Boxing Day because they assume that BJ will copy the devolved nations but I think that he'll go for Tier 5 and above because it's an easier sell to the Commons than national lockdown.

I suspect that supermarkets didn't get a heads up in March that advice about food shopping would change. I suspect that supermarkets have enough loyalty card data to change their deliveries to take into account that many people shopping daily would shop weekly or even fortnightly instead.

I also suspect that rail companies/police weren't warned that an exodus out of London was possible in December too. I suspect media reports were exaggerated (trains are always busy around Xmas) but it's within the realms of possibility that more people would travel and some calming measures might be needed.

I think it was clear early March what was coming.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2020/mar/09/matt-hancock-under-fire-from-mps-over-uk-coronavirus-response

All good buinesses plan ahead, it isn't a question of getting the nod but keeping up with what is going on in the world and having a sensible plan in place.

I knew the christmas mixing would be curtailed not because of a nod but because I read the newspapers and saw what was happening with the rates.