STAY SAFE, STAY HOME
Each and every one of our colleagues are essential to providing high quality patient care to our patients, whether you are employed in front-line clinical service delivery or in a service that supports this.
However, as the pandemic continues to escalate, we all need to do what we can to slow down the rate of infection and enable our NHS to be able to more readily cope with the anticipated demand. This was central to the Prime Minister’s message to us all last night.
In responding to the Government directive, I want to send a very clear and unambiguous message to all of you – if it is not absolutely necessary for you to be at your place of work, then do not come in. As such, I am asking as many colleagues at UHMBT to work from home as possible, to be effective immediately.
We employ over 7,000 people and we couldn’t possibly list every role and state whether we consider it to be absolutely necessary for you to attend work at this time - we are trusting you and your teams to use your best judgement, so that if you can carry out your work from home then you should do so.. We anticipate that this will be for a period of a minimum of 3 weeks and your basic pay will not be affected.
This instruction could raise a number of questions and we don’t have all of the answers right now, but we will be working through these over the course of this week and will ensure we keep you informed with any updates via our website and corporate communications.
We also recognise that it may not be practical or feasible for all of you to work from home, particularly as we support 24/7 care delivery across our hospitals and community sites. For those colleagues who need to come to work each day, we will ensure you are able to deliver the services required as safely and effectively as possible.
You can read the Prime Minister’s Instruction in full here: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-address-to-the-nation-on-coronavirus-23-march-2020 but, I want highlight some of his words here:
“That is why people will only be allowed to leave their home for the following very limited purposes:
- shopping for basic necessities, as infrequently as possible
- one form of exercise a day - for example a run, walk, or cycle - alone or with members of your household;
- any medical need, to provide care or to help a vulnerable person; and
- travelling to and from work, but only where this is absolutely necessary and cannot be done from home.
"That’s all - these are the only reasons you should leave your home.”
I’m sorry that I do not have all the answers to your questions now. This is a fast moving picture and it is likely that we will be reaching out to colleagues working from home with regards to deploying them to support clinical and other services as the situation develops.
Please be reassured that we are here to support you and we will issue a further update later this week to answer many of your questions regarding this latest announcement.
Kind regards
Aaron Cummins
Chief Executive