As we all come to terms with the COVID-19 outbreak, we would like to take this opportunity to share with you the steps that Workforce Facilities has taken, and will continue to take, to ensure that we are positioned to continue to provide you with our services, allowing you to concentrate on other demands on your time.

The spread of COVID-19 is a pandemic of unprecedented proportions. Safeguarding the health, safety and well being of our customers, employees and suppliers is always of primary importance to us, and so our team were heavily involved from the outset in preparing us to cope with the spread of COVID-19.

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Actions Taken:

As the virus started to spread around the world, we recognised the need to stress test our existing business continuity plans to ensure that our contingencies were sufficiently robust. That testing, carried out in light of the anticipated scale of the growing pandemic, allowed us to strengthen certain aspects of our plans to ensure a full service could continue in times such as those that we find ourselves in today.

Specific thought was given to the prospect of remote working for our office-based employees for a prolonged period of time and managing high volumes of sickness absence within both our office based and operational employees. We feel confident that we have the right plans in place for the coming months and that continuity of our service is protected.

Our team compiled specific risk assessments and method statements for our operational employees. These included RAMS and new training modules on safe ways of working within the changing built environment. We are also minimising travel, utilising technology to conduct remote meetings, and looking at ways in which we can help to protect our employees, particularly those who are high risk.

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Additional Support for Clients:

In addition to our core hard and soft service provisions, our expert teams are able to offer additional solutions to safeguard both client’s properties, assets, but more importantly, people. These include the full disinfection and sanitisation of buildings as well as expanding our security service to offer thermal fever screening. This can be used to help in the detection of COVID-19 cases, at the entrance and/or critical areas of properties.

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Continuity of Supplies:

Our Procurement team is working hard to source the necessary products required during this time. The sourcing environment is currently challenging with demand exceeding supply, particularly for the essential products associated with managing this crisis.

We are however able to benefit from strong and long-established relationships with our supply base, in addition to contingency suppliers to provide us with security of supply when required. Our supply chain is being kept under close review, and as a priority every effort is being made to source the high demand products. The Procurement team have employed a fast-track approval process for new supply avenues and are at the forefront of sourcing and implementing innovation that will demonstrate how we can meet our client needs, even in times of crisis.

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Communication:

Regular communications are being sent to our employees to direct them to the latest advice from the government and the NHS, and to remind them of good hygiene practices and safety information.

We have a team of Legal, HR and our H&S professionals monitoring the guidance and advice released by the government and the NHS in order to adapt business policies, practices and behaviours accordingly. A central dedicated reporting process has been created to allow us to record COVID-19 related absence, allowing us to track patterns and identify any areas of the business that are experiencing high levels of absence so that we can then look to provide additional resource. All of our senior management team are fully engaged with tackling the challenges that COVID-19 is creating, and our board of directors are reviewing developments and discussing new measures daily.

 

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