Cut The Crap - Understanding Your Obligations (and Reducing Your Fear)

#1 Cut the Crap

Let’s get to the heart of the matter. Do you understand your obligations as a manager in this post Covid world?

We get worried about what we don’t understand so here’s some points to get you started.

Understanding the Legislature

Furlough

The best and easiest guide to furlough that I’ve found is here https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/fundamentals/emp-law/employees/furlough

Working from home

Legally you must consider applications for home working but how you apply this will vary depending on the type of business you work for. Great guidelines to home working can be found here https://www.acas.org.uk/working-from-home

Following the Guidance

Your HR department will be working overtime to provide you with a company specific ‘back to work’ plan. If you haven’t seen this – ASK FOR ONE. Ask your boss and ask your HR manager. Now is not the time to be fobbed off with ‘back to normal’ – as you can see from the legislature above changes have to be made.

If your HR department have done a great job and provided you with a plan and some guidance take the time to read it and think about how it applies to your particular team. Don’t just ignore it and assume you understand it.

Some points to consider

-         Do you understand the guidance? A great way to confirm this is to ask your HRBP for some real-life examples

-         What guidance have you received from your boss?

-         How are your peer managers going to approach it?

-         Are different teams approaching this in different ways?

Task – the sense check

It’s time to be honest. How have you REALLY managed your team during this time?

-         If they were furloughed have you made any contact with them?

-         Have you just expected things to continue you as normal?

-         Have you forced everyone onto conference calls?

-         Have you kept in contact to ‘check up’ as opposed to ‘check in’?

-         What is the workload looking like? Can it actually be done in the time you have?

-         What are you worrying about?

Let’s get clear on your stuff before we start overlaying the legalities on it! It makes it a lot easier to get clarity on it.