Managers demanding admin team come back to the offce

[Peanutbutteryogurt]

Hoping for some advice here as need to send a reply email!

I work part time, two days a week at home and one day in the office to do printing and paperwork. This system has worked very well since April and as far as I knew was ongoing for the foreseeable future. We got an email from some manager who I have never met saying as of next shift everyone will be expected to work in the office, basically as we wear masks and if we socially distance it will be fine!

We have a small office, on any given day there could be up to 11 of us in the one office. We have some cardboard screens in-between some desks and we wear masks. It is impossible to distance at all times when we need to move around, put something in someone's tray etc. Managers are insisting the office is completely covid secure. It is quite clearly not.

Do I have any leg to stand on here? I desperately don't want to go in. I have stayed home to work today while I have an email back and forth with this manager and will go in tomorrow as my usual routine, but I am worried about next week.

As it happens, I work for the NHS in a hospital. We are literally just coming out of the peak of this wave and still have over 200 covid patients in the hospital.

It tends to be such a lazy management attitude that because some people don’t work well from home, instead of performance managing those people they instead chicken out and penalise everyone. Which basically means they need to be performance managed because they’re not doing their job of managing staff!

What a shit show! I would suggest you and all your colleagues make sure you have the NHS test and trace app to ensure you are all covered should one of you be in the office and test positive after - I don't see how your workplace could possibly dispute if the app tells you to isolate.

We have to switch off the NHS app when at work

@BonnieDundee

What a shit show! I would suggest you and all your colleagues make sure you have the NHS test and trace app to ensure you are all covered should one of you be in the office and test positive after - I don't see how your workplace could possibly dispute if the app tells you to isolate.

We have to switch off the NHS app when at work

WTF?! I'm getting angry now!

Yes we switch off the app so we don't pick up false notifications via Bluetooth.

Lemonadefromlemons

Yes! We have one team member who does that same job as me and she is very very slow, god knows what she's doing all day. She's been getting away with it for years apparently and no one will manage her.

Yes. I’m also told to switch the app,off at work. Of course they have no way of knowing if you have or not. 😁. Would be a shame if the app told you to isolate every time you went into work!

I’d look at your trusts policy/email central hr to find out what has centrally been decided then quote it to your manager

The central guidance seems to be work at home where you can, however if you delve further in to the government guidance it does seem employers can call anyone back to the office at any time unless they are shielding or are vulnerable in some way. So basically, the government guidance is nonsense.

What a total shit show it sounds @Peanutbutteryogurt and I hope that you manage to actual talk to someone who has actual compassion for staff members and sees them as people and not just a number because the knobs that are deciding that this is ok to do certainly don’t at all!

I do not believe that for 1 moment that your the only one that has concerns that is just a put up and shut up method that they are trying to use on you to make you feel like you can’t express it is wrong when everyone else is ok with it 😏.

Then the way you found out again shit move from them because they obvs knew that people would not be happy about it at all!

As for if someone else in the office gets the virus not having to isolate sounds like they think your all robots that are immune to the virus 🤯🤯

The guidance doesn’t say stay at home unless your office is covid secure, it says you may only go to work if it isn’t possible to work from home.
I’d be speaking to your union if you have one, or ACAS. If you’ve been successfully wfh I don’t see how they can say it isn’t possible?

Best of luck

Are you presumably all vaccinated?
Maybe some bright spark thinks that’s fine if so

FFS why are places insisting on this? Dhs office was supposedly ‘covid s secure’. And they wanted them all in for productivity. Half the office have not got it, including some with several risk factors. He’s currently on day 5 of horrendous symptoms, the rest of the house and our support bubble are waiting to hear if we’ve all got it too (very likely). All their work could be done from home. It’s awful.

Thanks for All your replies. This thread has certainly made me feel validated, I am not usually one for causing a fuss and I feel a bit more firm in my stance for tomorrow. I am supposed to speak to the manager tomorrow and I am wondering what will happen when I basically say 'no'. I don't think they'll shift on the 'its covid secure' idea. I really don't. I have already pointed out it's against government guidelines, it isn't secure etc. The next step will be higher up or HR I guess.

Dinocan

Can they be reported to someone? Can anything be done or are we just work machines? If I caught it after being forced in to the office I would really be so angry!

What would happen if all 11 of you tested positive and/or were required to isolate as a close contact at the same time? Would the department grind to a halt? You could ask if there is contingency for this scenario.

Pre-lockdown, one particular department in my office had a positive case and all of them had to self-isolate because they shared a room. (They were the team that, among other things, were responsible for handing out laptops and other IT equipment, and fix things that couldn’t be done remotely, so it was particularly inconvenient when we did go into lockdown and none of them were around!) All our office reopening plans have split each department into 2 groups, each group being able to go in on alternative weeks, so we would avoid the situation of an entire department being down.

It's the HSE who are interested in breaches of employee safety at work op. Just saying.....

I would ask at your Q&A tomorrow definitely. If they are saying they are COVID secure and there's 11 of you in a standard office then only half can be in at any one time and it has to be visually displayed on entry and inside the working area.

When you pop in this week you will be able to assess whether it's covid secure and if it's not take pics and send to HSE. The level of incompetence coming directly from the NHS itself is outrageous.

Just realised you've said it's a small office.... So it will be less than half, say 1/4 that can be in at any one time. I'm assuming your team is a mix of full/part time with set days....? Ask the manager what the rota system is in this "covid secure" work area.

I'm guessing that a lot are WFH with children and probably getting a lot less done as a result. I know a lot of workplaces are asking people back into the office as it means they can send children to school and get work done.

Yes there would be 11 on the busiest days with a mix of part time and full timers. It would be impossible to walk around without being less than 1m from someone.

This might be helpful www.lewissilkin.com/en/insights/coronavirus-faqs-for-employers-on-working-from-home

Ah yes I wonder if Dutchess has it. My work has had a huge push to tell us all that we are critical workers and that it will speak to schools on our behalf when we need to send children in.

We don't actually have very many colleagues at this level with primary school children, they pretty much all have adult/university children except me with my toddler and one other with primary aged kids. The arrangement is similar in our parralell offices at the other sites in the trust so I doubt that's it. We can use the critical.worker card anyway as we're NHS, whether we work from home or not.

At my NHS community team workplace we had a huge outbreak where pretty much every staff member including all our admin staff got it.
This was despite it supposedly being 'Covid secure'. Yes we had sanitizer and masks and less people in a room but one nurse who was asymptomatic and suddenly the whole team had it within a week.
Things like people eating at desks with no masks were identified as a major cause and now you have to have your lunch alone or outside.

You can believe me that after that the Trust took things a bit more seriously because it effectively shut the team down and was very hard to keep an essential service going.

Previously it was wfh if you are vulnerable or have a good reason to now it's everyone wfh and just 1 admin and 1 clinical in the office on a rota to answer phones etc.

It can nearly all be done from home these days with electronic notes systems, phone diversion, email, Teams etc. We go on visits from home rather than the team base. In hindsight getting a lot of people to go out exposing themselves to Covid and then bringing them all back to the same place was a clear recipe for spread.

I agree do ask the q to the chief exec. What difference would it really make if they just had a rota with a few staff in the office each day? It's so knee jerk to just insist everyone goes back. Surely there are better solutions.

Just another idea but could you contact your infection control team? They might be able to advise you further.

I'm also NHS and we are also told to turn off the app whilst at work. We have also had members of the team test postive but "because we wear masks we don't need to isolate". All admin have to come in every day and there is no flex on that at all.

Just a thought, have you all been offered the vaccine? Could this be the reason for the change now?

My neighbour is a medical secretary and she's been told they are all to be in full time from the 18th, 3 weeks after the last vaccinations were done, the reason is lack of productivity from some members of the team