Working at Home – A Guidance Note for Staff
You may have been asked to work from home. It is important that you take steps to look after your health, safety and wellbeing during a period of working from home.
There are a few simple steps that you can take to remain productive and healthy during a period of working from home. You should:
- Set up a designated workspace, i.e. separate space for you to work in where you can focus on tasks without being distracted.
- Make sure you have the technology you need including a reliable internet connection.
- Create a list of realistic and achievable tasks to keep you focused.
- Maintain regular contact with your manager and colleagues – use skype or other forms of electronic communications to keep in touch. Setup up a routine for regular communications and stick to it.
- Take regular breaks – know when to move away from your workstation and take a break, think about how active or inactive you are and take a break from long periods of concentration to give yourself a break mentally. Take a break for at least 20 minutes at lunchtime.
- Avoid being ‘always on’ by ensuring that they identify non-working time
- Contact your line manager if you need support, for example, in relation to heightened feelings of anxiety. Contact your mental health champion if you need other support. A list of Champions who are trained in supporting mental health at work is available on Connect.
- Be aware of the things that can affect your wellbeing and what you need to do to combat these with activities and resources that are available to support you.
 Do you want to express an interest
to move into roles in Health and Social Care?
Due to the development of Coronavirus (COVID - 19) we are asking our staff to come forward to change roles to strengthen arrangements in Health and Social Care and support our communities. If you already work within social care this is an opportunity to increase your current hours of work.
There will be appropriate support and training and staff will be able to work where required across a range of settings both in the community and potentially within care homes performing a variety of duties.
You do not need experience working in care but you do need to care. Some of these posts will be subject to PVG. Whilst we are mainly looking for staff who will support individuals or groups of individuals, we are also keen to attract staff with a range of skills who could support wider aspects of Social Care provision for example food preparation and transportation.
These roles will be available across Dumfries and Galloway and wherever possible you will be working as close to your home community as possible. If you would like to be involved please call internal 64185 or external 01387 260185 to speak to a member of the team.
 Helping with Email
If your team has a generic inbox that you use to receive emails, then you may wish to apply the following message as an auto-response.
Message for generic inboxes:
Hello
Thank you for your email. We will deal with your request, query or information but it might take us a bit longer than normal.
The COVID-19 pandemic is having an effect on Council resources and staffing levels.
These are unprecedented and challenging times and we are working across Dumfries and Galloway to respond to the situation as it develops, following official advice.
We appreciate your patience and understanding.
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