The Return of “Normality”: How Skills Training Centre Have Adapted Their Workplace Post Lockdown
As a provider of essential training, Skills Training Centre needed to ensure that course delivery continued, whilst ensuring the wellbeing and safety of their employees and course attendees remained a priority. In this blog we will discuss the ways in which we have adapted our workplace and the safety measures we have in place.
After more than a year of remote working and with the country starting to ease back into “normality” post lockdown; many employers are starting to reopen their offices and invite their teams back into the workplace.
As a provider of essential training, Skills Training Centre needed to ensure that course delivery continued, whilst ensuring the wellbeing and safety of their employees and course attendees remained a priority. In this blog we will discuss the ways in which we have adapted our workplace and the safety measures we have in place.
Created and adapted risk assessments
At the Skills Training Centre we have created risk assessments that outline the key risks imposed by COVID-19 and included detailed steps that need to be taken to protect our employees, course attendees, trainers and visitors. We have created individual risk assessments for all of our courses and these are continually updated as and when new guidance and rules are given by the government.
For all of our risk assessments, we include the following information:
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Identify what activity within each course might cause transmission of Coronavirus.
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Think about who could be at risk – this could include employees, attendees and trainers.
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Decide how likely it is that someone could be exposed to the virus.
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Finally, identify the controls and measures that we need to put in place to reduce/prevent the risk of infection.
All of our risk assessments are available for all of our attendees to view. Please contact us for more details.
Hybrid working and flexible hours
It is reported that 40% of employers said they expect more than half their workforce to work regularly from home after the pandemic has ended. According to data from the Office of National Statistics, prior to COVID-19 only around 5% of the workforce worked mainly from home. The COVID-19 pandemic has proven for many companies that remote working is achievable and more desirable and offering employees the opportunity to adopt a hybrid working pattern allows for a much healthier work life balance and possibly an increase in productivity.
At Skills Training Centre we have provided our staff with the opportunity to work remotely on certain days throughout the week and even adopted flexible working hours. Having an office based in London means that a majority of our employees have to commute on busy tubes and buses, however with the flexible working hours, this allows them to alter their hours in an attempt to avoid the crowded public transport - enabling them to feel safer and reduce transmissions of the virus.
What does this mean for those already booked on courses?
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All courses will be running as planned. If you are unable to attend you must call us on 020 8619 0939 as soon as possible.
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We continue to offer a range of courses virtually with more being added as demand dictates.
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Further updates will continue to be posted on our website.
Rest assured that our hybrid and flexible hours policy won’t affect our customer service and we will continue to exceed expectations by delivering the best possible customer experience and training courses.
Working safely during Coronavirus (COVID-19)
We are following the UK government's advice in ensuring that we have an appropriate cleaning schedule. This includes regular cleaning of our training rooms between courses and encouraging trainers and attendees to wear masks, maintain social distancing and sanitise.
Each training room at the Centre is marked up to enable social distancing . Antiseptic gels and alcohol wipes are available for use during the course and delegates will be asked and expected to use these at regular intervals to protect themselves and to clean things such as the work surface of their desk, and potentially any equipment they might be asked to use as part of the course and at the end of the day before leaving.
Our instructor will carry out a risk assessment as part of the course, which will take account of all areas where the course is to take place and all delegates will be advised of the control measures in this risk assessment to keep everyone safe. A temperature check will be conducted, using a non-contact infrared thermometer to ensure that you do not have a temperature.
Skills Training Centre would like to extend their thanks and gratitude to all of our team, trainers and attendees for their loyalty and fortitude in adapting to these changes and allowing us to provide a safe and happy environment. We will continue supporting our customers in providing adequate and appropriate training for our employees to enable them to carry out their key worker roles proficiently on behalf of those that they are providing this service too.
If you wish to gain more information about the measures Skills Training Centre are taking to tackle COVID-19, please get in touch.
