Anyone else’s manager working at home in a key worker role?

[EL8888]

I am a key worker -nurse and wondered is anyone else’s manager is basing themselves at home? It’s a patient facing role by the way. Just for clarity this person doesn’t have symptoms, pre-existing conditions and neither do her children. She’s been really upfront that she just doesn’t want to leave her children as she is “not comfortable with that”. They have childcare but she doesn’t want to use it at this time. Surely she should be leading by example and not be at home? It’s a hands on role and surely especially now managers should lead by example?l

I think it completely depends on an individual role. If her role can be done from home, then she's following government guidelines. In my line of work a lot of our frontline staff are managed by people who can do their role from home. In the first wave of guidance they were still going in to support staff but now with tougher restrictions they'd be breaking them if they went in

The guidance is pretty clear that you should work from home if at all possible.
If she is managing working from home then yes she should be at home.
I think the fewer people working outside of the home the better.

It’s not an office or a clinic role. It’s a clinical role on a ward -put it this way no one can do their role at home. She really can’t do hers but is styling out she can

I think she has a cheek! Typical NHS management.

We were all told unless we were directly operational then we should go home and work.

IT is in place to make it happen. I’m still at work as I’m operational but many many people aren’t

Well if she is frontline then what is she doing from home?
In that case I think it’s a bit cheeky, but who has allowed her to do this? Someone must have said it was ok? Her boss? In which case maybe they have a different opinion in the role.

@nno one is sure what she’s doing at home? We got the odd email or phone call but that’s it really. We are short staffed which means longer days and sometimes 13.5 hours with no break. Typically she would assist with covering breaks but now doesn’t. Some of her tasks are falling to others to complete

Her manager said it’s ok l assume? Not sure about that

@Heyallyoucoolcatsandkittens she most definitely is operational

Vague job role? Only so I can say if our equivalents are at home or not!

I am not clinical at all but I am in a clinical setting with clinicians doing an operational role. We do have clinicians working from home operationally - it isn’t of NO benefit

Essentially shielding managers is often seen to be helpful because they can ops manage from afar, and if your manager goes down often this can cause more problems aka rota planning, authorising things, staffing issues. Without knowing your entire set up or your managers role it’s hard to know whether it’s of any benefit to your organisation or just to her personally. I can’t see why a ward manager doing some work from home wouldn’t work but on the ground it can feel awful for those left to do the ground work and take all the risks
If it assures you most managers seem to be spending hours on conference calls right now trying to sort out ops issues and it’s very time consuming
I’ve been trying to order expensive equipment, rearrange rotas, sort out cancelled holidays, cover sickness etc

Also implement share and build SOP’s and guidance. The info coming out from NHSE and PHE and the CCG is phenomenally HUGE amounts

It’s a physical health ward with lots of patient and staff contact typically

It's an interesting question. We are 'essential' and the management (of which I'm a bit) come in mostly. The actual front line would feel abandoned if we all buggered off. But might actually be safer because less contact with people.

I wouldn't put my child in childcare unless I absolutely had to though.

Tricky, I'm probably doing similar though. I'm a nurse but in management and am working part time from home. I'm a single parent and my children's school is currently not open every day though. Across the whole organisation though lots of senior staff are working from home and we have generally been adhering to the guidance- if you can work from home, you should.

@AmyFl it’s awkward as junior members of staff are questioning it all and why especially at this time. The answer is she wants to but realistically everyone else does as well

Especially as the other ward manager around the hospital are still working on wards

Thing is you really don't actually know for sure about pre-existing conditions, you only know shes said there aren't..Doesn't mean it ia true. I went for a year at work hiding a monthly infusion treatment, the outcome of which could have been life changing. Only my boss knew. There may be things going on she doesn't want you to know.. If you feel that strongly speak to higher level.

Anywhere else, the managers would be there supporting their staff. But in the NHS, the managers take advantage of their seniority to do whatever they want.

Of course everyone else wants to work at home. But it is not always actually practical to have your entire workforce at home or even to force the whole workforce to be exposed to each other for weeks on end.

Social distancing benefits more than just one person, if your entire team of staff go down with symptoms then the isolated staff will have to come in to pick up shifts and cover in the interim. I’m in a management team with 4 other people and we are all isolating from one another as no benefit if we all got sick at the same time who would cover us all?

Hi there. Can't speak for your manager. She may or may not be a selfish self preserving CF.
However, I'm a senior NHS manager in a really niche role. I'm at home. DH taking the hit for all shopping etc and I haven't been further than the bin since 13th March.
I have HUGE survivor guilt but I know that if I go down, so does a big chunk of service and people may actually die.
I'd love to visit my team just to show face/show solidarity but I know I can't.
So here I am. Sorry.

There seems to be two schools of though at our trust.

People should be working from home if they can.

Or

Rats off a sinking ship

It’s been very illuminating. We have a few managers who really are working from home and they are available on teams 7am-6pm. We have others we haven’t seen hide nor hair of since the lockdown. Fuck knows what they are doing tbh

@Heyallyoucoolcatsandkittens yeah it feels more like the 2nd here! Like l said an example should be set. Not sure how you then discipline someone for non-attendance or poor attendance at work, when in effect that’s what you were doing

If you feel strongly about it complain to HR or her manager. But speaking as a key worker in banking...my organisation is using this pandemic as a way to review non-essential roles. Roles not considered essential are likely to be considered for redundancy. I imagine when the Coronavirus funding dries up the NHS will do the same.

She might be pregnant.

I don't work in the NHS , but we are considered key workers. Someone at work with is working at home for the whole period, as decided/advised by the boss. No one except me and the boss know she's pregnant and that's what influenced the decision. There has been some gossip and eyebrow raising but I just stay out of it.

It seems to be the case everywhere that senior people get to work from home and junior ones don't. It's shit.

Also within the NHS plenty of staff who are normally patient facing are not at the moment.

I guess it's a combination of those two things. It is shit though. Can you raise it with your union as a staffing issue at least?