The Equality Act 2010 protects from discrimination based on religion or belief. This includes major recognised religions, as well as deeply held philosophical beliefs like atheism. More recently ethical veganism was found to be a protected belief.
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With the global rollout of the coronavirus vaccine gathering pace, in many jurisdictions, employers are being given more discretion to decide whether staff can and should return to the office. If your organisation has employees working from the office, you have a duty of care to your staff. Managers must ensure a safe working environment where employees’ health is protected.
This means they have to ensure they have a safe place to work, safe work equipment, their health is protected while working, and assess risks to their health and safety and take action to mitigate those risks. This includes protecting staff from COVID-19. Staff themselves have a responsibility to keep themselves and those around them safe and to learn the best ways to do that.
COVID-19: Social Distancing at Work specifically covers these topics. The course can be used as a standalone unit or as a unit within our standard OHS course.
continue readingDuring the continuing Coronavirus pandemic and the resulting uncertainty, stress and unemployment, scammers are seeing an opportunity to scam unsuspecting victims and take financial advantage of their plight. From “free government grants” to “the cure for coronavirus”, the next email you open could well be an attempt to extort you of thousands of pounds.
Phishing is still the biggest cyber threat to organisations. It’s popular with everyone from financially motivated criminal gangs to state-sponsored espionage groups. And all for one simple reason: it works. According to the annual Data Breach Investigations Report, phishing had by far the highest success rate of any threat vector. During the past year, despite being the primary threat action in less than 10% of security incidents, phishing was the primary weapon in almost a third (32%) of all data breaches.
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The UK continues to take steps to re-open the economy following lockdown in the first half of the year. The government is encouraging companies to get back to the office and people back into shops, bars and restaurants, helped in part by the Business and Planning Act. However, government guidelines state that employees and visitors should not visit an office if they or a member of their household are showing symptoms of coronavirus.
As businesses are looking to return to as close to “normal” as possible, it is important to ensure you take all appropriate actions to mitigate the risk of a coronavirus outbreak in the office. This requires that a register be kept of all visitors to the office and that visitors confirm that they are following these guidelines.
The spread of COVID-19 can be mitigated by ensuring visitors to the office:
Returning to work can be a stressful time for both managers and employees. Organisations have to reorganise their workplaces and work processes to help prevent the spread of Covid-19. Then, employers need to find solutions for how to effectively implement and monitor these new control measures, which are not easy tasks for any organisation in any industry.
However, while your organisation might have tackled all of the requirements to keep people safe and healthy, your efforts will only go so far without getting your staff to commit to these new safety measures.
So how can you create a culture that will engage employees and get their buy-in to this new ‘normal’?
While there are many challenges ahead, we’ve compiled some tips for what type of control measures you might need to implement and how you can get employees on board so that everyone’s health, safety and welfare is protected as people return to work.
The first step in taking care of employee health, safety and wellbeing is carrying out a risk assessment. This will help you:
Control measures might include:
What is most appropriate for your workplace will depend on many factors, such as the industry you work in, how many people are returning to work, and the nature of each person’s job.
While it is critical to assess the risks and put controls in place to protect everyone’s health and safety, it won’t be successful without employees doing their part. For example, you could have made handwashing facilities, hand sanitisers and cleaning supplies readily available throughout the workplace, but if no one uses them, these measures become redundant.
One of the best ways to create engagement and get your employees to commit to health and safety changes is to get them involved. Ask them to help you identify the hazards and assess the risks. It can be as easy as talking and listening to your staff about what they think should be implemented to help them work safely. Another more streamlined process would be to do this through a people risk assessment software.
You can enrol all of your staff on the risk assessment helping you to easily identify, assess and manage most if not all of the risks in the workplace. Getting your staff involved in this process not only protects them, but it can also create a culture of trust and partnership between employers and employees. It can also reassure staff that you and the organisation view their health and safety as a priority.
Transparency is another important element in gaining commitment. Share your findings of the risk assessment with your entire workforce so they understand:
Regular communication about workplace changes is another key component of engagement and compliance. Update employees on all new processes and procedures and send out communications regarding any process changes. For example, keep them informed about:
Sending out communications doesn’t have to be a burden – software can help automate communications and track acceptance for compliance. Online training is another great way to get your organisation’s messages across to your entire organisation in a fast, concise way. An authoring tool can make it simple to customise training and communication to ensure it is relevant and specific to your organisation’s procedures for returning to work.
Just like in the risk assessment process, encourage employees to continuously look for hazards and areas of improvement to help keep everyone safe. Check with them to see how things are going and that you value their feedback.
If things are working well, communication shouldn’t stop there. If people are complying with the control measures in place and are taking responsibility for the health and safety of everyone in the workplace, take time to communicate that to your staff. Recognise and praise their effort and commitment towards preventing the spread of Covid-19 and keeping a safe and healthy work environment. Appreciating their commitment can go a long way during these challenging times.
Every employee has different circumstances that could create vulnerabilities or challenges when returning to work. For example, workers might:
If not cared for properly, these circumstances can lead to more issues, such as increased stress, depression and lower productivity.
Talk to your employees about how the pandemic has affected them personally and professionally. Can you work together to come up with some solutions to help manage those issues? For example, if an employee has child care needs, can their schedule be adapted to help meet their needs? If an employee has an underlying health condition that makes them more vulnerable, can additional measures be implemented, or can they switch to a similar role that would allow them to work safely? What about employees that feel more stressed or anxious about returning to work?
Think about what you can do to help ease their concerns, for example:
Gaining employee commitment during these challenging times can be as simple as keeping open lines of communication and encouraging staff to get involved. Praise and recognise staff for their efforts, and take the time to understand and accommodate personal needs. Employees who are involved and feel appreciated and valued are much more likely to get on board with changes in the workplace and, ultimately, feel happier in their role.
The process of returning to work will have many challenges ahead, but by each person doing their part, we can all create and maintain safe and healthy workplaces for everyone returning to work.
A new report by the Centre for Social Justice found that there are currently at least 100,000 victims of modern slavery in the UK. This is a huge increase from the 10,000-13,000 suspected victims according to a 2017 government study. Recently, Leicester-based fashion brands Boohoo and Quiz have been embroiled in modern slavery allegations.
Boohoo is currently investigating reports that workers at one of its Leicester suppliers were being paid just £3.50 per hour, almost £5 lower than the £8.20 national minimum wage. They have also allegedly been forced to work during the COVID-19 lockdown without protective equipment and social distancing. These reports immediately started to damage Boohoo’s reputation, with big-name retailers such as ASOS, Next and Zalando all dropping Boohoo’s clothing from their websites and their shares plummeting as a result. A few days later, Quiz announced that they believe one of their suppliers subcontracted clothing production to another supplier. They believe this subcontractor was paying their staff well below the minimum wage.
continue readingWhile much of the world has been in lockdown and most staff have been working from home, financial crime has not disappeared. In fact, fraud has become more sophisticated than ever with many criminals using the pandemic as an opportunity to exploit vulnerabilities. It is crucial to adapt financial crime controls such as anti-money laundering (AML) procedures to the specific needs of the crisis. Financial crime procedures should be kept under frequent review as the pandemic progresses.
Here are some tips on how to protect your firm from financial crime during the pandemic and beyond.
continue readingIt’s something we’re hearing daily: businesses and employees will have to adapt to a post-coronavirus “new normal”.
It seems clear that the life we return to, if and when restrictions are lifted, will not be the world we left when lockdown began in March. It’s possible the full extent of the changes prompted by this crisis won’t be clear until years after the fact. But as governments around the world start to plan a route back to something like normality, we can see some likely themes emerging as “the new normal” takes shape.
The Death of Open Plan?
In the short-term at least, offices will need to change. Until we have an effective vaccine for Covid-19 and the threat level has reduced to zero, going back to our close-knit collaborative offices doesn’t seem to be an option.
This may spell the end of open plan office layouts. Nobody knows how long social distancing measures will need to be in place and until we know, keeping employees at a physical distance from one another is a must. This could mean staggered working times, part-time working from home where possible, and physical re-designs of the office space to make more room.
Communal areas like kitchens may need to be closed and one-way systems brought in to avoid breaking social distancing rules. Even if only some of these measures are necessary, this will be enough to make it a very different office space than we were used to.
Working From Home?
Home working was long predicted to be the future of work but progress was fairly slow. The coronavirus crisis has accelerated adoption of this model, with millions of businesses adjusting to widespread home working – but will it last?
Businesses that have adapted well to the change might find they want to make it permanent, at least for part of the time. If their business can continue to be productive without a central office hub, they might find it cheaper to do without a permanent office altogether. Likewise, employees who never got the chance to work from home before might have found it suits them better, helping their work/life balance and improving their overall happiness levels.
Between the extremes of companies going straight back to their old working model and those allowing unlimited home working, there will be many organisations who settle somewhere between the two – perhaps allowing staff to work up to 3 days a week at home, for example, but asking them to return to the office for key (albeit socially distanced) meetings.
Whatever happens, it appears highly likely that home working will be far more widespread than before and the days of commuting to the office for 5 days a week may well be over.
Culture Changes?
Coronavirus has had an effect on everyone in society. Within a few weeks, it changed the way we worked, socialised, enjoyed time with our loved ones and our hobbies. It seems unlikely this won’t spill over into working culture long-term.
Even when coronavirus becomes less of a threat (if this is indeed how events play out), presenteeism may be more frowned upon. Every worker is likely to have seen people struggle into work while coughing and spluttering but with the new awareness of how we can easily infect each other, this might be more strongly discouraged.
Employees that have worked from home for several months and proved it can be done may expect more flexibility from their employers. Should home working become more normal as predicted, there will be an uptick in use of videoconferencing technology. Collaborating with team members based remotely will seem more casual – even with teams on different continents!
Coronavirus has changed our working lives on many levels. Whatever “the new normal” entails, we’ll all have to adjust to a post-coronavirus world – and find a way that improves working lives for employees and employers alike.
The UK government is encouraging businesses in certain industries to return to their office where possible. There are a myriad of compliance issues to consider when transitioning from home back to the office in line with government guidance.
VinciWorks has created a new guide designed to help you plan for returning to the office as and when you can. The guide will help you identify the compliance areas that should be considered. This includes health and safety, GDPR, financial crime and more.
The guide covers:
The UK government has begun to encourage businesses in certain industries to return to work where possible. While many professional services firms and other primarily office-based businesses are still working from home, it is important to understand the steps that need to be taken as and when it is safe to return to the office.
In our short on-demand webinar, our Director of Learning and Content Nick Henderson gives guidance on how staff can keep themselves and their colleagues safe in the office.
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