For those of you in customer facing roles this will be essential.

For those of you who work in a support service requiring research, report writing, etc. it is very important that you maintain contact with your colleagues. 

You should therefore ensure your phone is diverted to you during your working time, up to date voicemail or other arrangements set up during non-working time so that anybody calling you knows when you will next be working or who else to contact in your absence if needed.  Many of us are using Microsoft Teams to make calls too – allowing video or voice calls through your laptop.  The same applies therefore to your out of office on your email.  See here (Staff Hub tips on emails and ICT Home Working tips). 

If you are a manager you must make sure you maintain a high degree of contact with your team.  Depending on your workload or size of your team it may be sensible to set up a cascade, ensuring everybody makes and receives regular contact. 

There is no reason why you cannot continue to have 1:1s, team meetings or even PDRs using technology such as Teams regardless of where you and your staff are working.  Having held an All Staff Briefings with nearly 200 people it has become increasingly apparent that we can continue all our usual communication channels to our staff in a variety of different ways.

Through our Hybrid Working Policy – your manager may have particular expectations regarding where/how you communicate. If so they’ll have spoken to you about this.