Snow disruption and school closures – guidance for colleagues

Snow disruption and school closures – guidance for colleagues

If the snowy conditions today are affecting your ability to travel safely, and if you have children at schools which have closed due to the snow, these brief guidance points, which are a summary of our policy on inclement weather, will help colleagues and line managers:

• Safety is the number one priority. Please refer to yesterday’s guidance about travel safety.
• Talk to your line manager if you feel travel is unsafe in your situation or if your child’s school has closed at short notice.
• Each situation will be individual – it is between you and your line manager to agree a “workaround” solution for today.
• If it is agreed that you are unable to attend your usual workplace, please use the time effectively for whatever you can do from home.
• This could be essential training and catching up with emails or preparation for appraisals or work projects.
• Covid taught us all a lot about managing work around having children at home too – do what you can but use the time as effectively as possible.
• Plan for the rest of the week, based on the forecast for where you live and anywhere you may need to go for work.
• Make contingency arrangements for childcare if it looks likely your child’s school will remain closed for longer than today.
• Tomorrow and for the rest of the week: where you can get to your work-base safely, but you have children off school from tomorrow, we will expect you to have childcare arrangements in place.
• We’ll continue to provide regular weather updates via all comms channels – please keep an eye out for those to help you, with your line manager, plan for the rest of the week to ensure everyone’s safety and to support patient services.
• You can refer to further detail in the policy HRP03 Personal Leave Policy.