According to a poll of HR professionals it was found that only 4 per cent of employers have returned staff to a place of work following the relaxation of lockdown rules.    

The Prime Minister - Boris Johnson - had asked employees who were unable to work from home, to return to their workplaces. However, People Management readers found that employees were still being asked to work from home and that did not appear to be likely to change for the foreseeable future.

Various reasons were given by those polled - 24 per cent said they were waiting for the government to give specific guidance for their sector before returning staff to the workplace - as 38 per cent of the HR professionals had found the advice they had received not very or not at all helpful and 55 per cent expected that their staff would to continue to work from home for some time. However, 62 per cent had found the government’s sector-specific advice on returning to work very or quite helpful.

Some 17 per cent of respondents said that their staff had worked right through the lockdown.

However, Martin Tiplady - Managing Director of Chameleon People Solutions - was of the opinion that employers should be able to work out the specific measures that would be appropriate in their circumstances.

He said:

“I’m not the sort of individual who feels that every twist and turn should be covered by guidance; it’s got to allow interpretation and some wiggle room for people to use common sense.”

He added:

“I have talked to employers where they are looking for literally every turn to be expressed in a guidance note – but nobody’s been there, why would you want that? The guidance is fine but people have now got to use pragmatism about how best to apply it.”

Of the measures that the guidance recommended, 67 per cent of respondents stated that they were altering their workplace layouts to support social distancing; 54 per cent said they were staggering the shifts to reduce employees contact; 53 per cent said that they were planning to hold fewer and shorter meetings and 49 per cent were staggering break times.

Back-to-back or side-to-side rather than face-to-face working was one of the more controversial recommendations in the guidance for when social distancing - as keeping two metres apart could be impossible in a workplace. Only 19 per cent of respondents stated that they were introducing temperature checking of employees at their entrances, with only 6 per cent stating that they would be regularly testing the staff for the virus.

A major debate, when restrictions were first eased, was about how the staff could safely commute to work. The majority of employers - 66 per cent - reported having conversations about this with employees before asking them to return.

One of the recommendations in the guidance to help employees avoid peak commuting times was to stagger start and finish times and 59 per cent of respondents said they were introducing this.

Just under half - 47 per cent of those polled - said they were asking employees to walk or cycle more to work; 33 per cent said they were promoting cycle to work schemes more heavily, but only 6 per cent had offered to pay for taxis.