Heartbeat March 2020

When is working from home the
right thing to do?
COVID-19
Doing what we can to reduce the
risk of spreading the infection
remains essential and we know that
many colleagues have asked or been
asked to work from home. Every
employee is essential to this Trust
and working from home does not
mean that you are less important.
The NHS is a team.
With over 1800 roles in our organisation
we can’t produce a list of everyone who
should and shouldn’t be working at
home so please consider the following
guide:
• If you work administratively,
managerially or clinically in
a patient facing area, we do not
recommend that you work from
home.
• If you provide ancillary work, for
example as a porter or driver,
supporting patient care, including
transporting samples or stock, we
do not recommend that you work
from home.
• If you work in a corporate /
backbone function, for example
in finance, governance or HR, it
may be possible for you to work
from home.
If you are able to work from home
there are circumstances where we may
ask you to return to site, and return to
Some colleagues have asked or been asked to work from home
undertake different work in support of the
pandemic response.
We cannot provide computer equipment for
everyone working from home. Our priority
is clinical areas for technology. But we have
published on Connect simple guidance for
how you can use technology which you can
download to run or be part of meetings,
and how you can potentially get access to
drives and documents.
If you wish to work from home and are
covered by the bullet points above we
would ask you to do four things:
1) Talk to your line manager and
discuss this with them. Their
agreement is required.
2) Send an email explaining your
job role and the decision you
and your manager have made to
swbh.wfh@nhs.net. This will help
us know who is away but well.
3) Download the myConnect App onto
your phone so you can keep up to
date with our guidance and stay in
touch with the Trust.
4) Make sure it is clear on your Trust
emails and Trust telephone extension
answerphone that you are working
from home due to COVID.
Your role in supporting the social
distancing and restrictions to travel are
greatly appreciated and will help to
slow down the spread of the virus.
Changing your role and volunteering
for the fight
The Trust issued working from
home guidance which expires on
7 April. The main reason for that
timeline was to make sure we had
organised the technology to support
the changes that have to happen.
We wanted to make sure that key
computing resources were not being
deployed mainly for non-clinical
work. Those arrangements are in
hand.
The other factor is our need to create
groups of colleagues, allied to medical
students and other volunteers, able to
collaborate in key non-clinical tasks, many
in patient facing areas. Bank and agency
arrangements are not going to be sufficient
to manage a sustained pandemic response.
Sickness including isolation means we are
working to a plan that assumes a 30%+
absence rates.
Chief Executive, Toby Lewis, told Heartbeat
about the intentions now; “This is a truly
difficult and unprecedented situation.
With this in mind we are doing two things:
Finalising the list of where we need help.
There are obvious priorities like cleaning and
portering. But there are other things that
can be done remotely.
“And completing an analysis of all roles
beyond the clinical space to work which
have to be maintained and who therefore
is potentially available for other work for
a temporary period. Our preference is for
corporate colleagues to volunteer into
new roles, but ultimately there is likely to
be an insistence process which kicks off
before Easter. Of course anyone returning
to site for these roles would have access to
isolation accommodation, like our hotels,
alongside those working in existing clinical
teams.”
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