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Local employment law specialists will be discussing the effect of the covid-19 pandemic on employees and workplaces as part of a virtual conference series next month.
Walkers' employment law conference on 'Covid-19 and the Evolution of the Workplace' will take place online between 23 and 25 February.
The conference will be led by Walkers' employment law specialists and will cover the ways in which covid-19 has and will continue to affect workforces and workplaces as well as key lessons learned for 2021 and beyond.
The team from Walkers has been dealing with a range of questions from businesses including the challenges of working from home, dealing with employees reluctant to return to the office, changes in staffing requirements, questions about working remotely from another jurisdiction, "lockdown burnout" and issues around disciplinary and performance management amid the disruption caused by covid-19.
The team has also been working with specialist regulatory colleagues on the challenges experienced by regulated financial services businesses during the pandemic.
"The breadth of questions for employers – some of them urgent and of strategic importance – that have been posed by covid-19 along with how to respond to the changing restrictions imposed and support offered by the States of Jersey and Guernsey have been of critical importance for employers," Daniel Read, Senior Counsel in Walkers' Jersey employment law team, said.
"These challenges face all businesses and we have advised a wide variety of employers across a range of sectors.
"There is no single message or lesson from what we have seen, but it has been so interesting to see how flexible many employers and employees have been, how willing many have been to accommodate the requests and requirements of their teams, and how much energy and time they have been prepared to invest in two-way communication between leadership and teams."
"The past ten months have seen a huge shift in how and where we work requiring directors, legal counsel and HR leaders to deal with an entirely new set of challenges and changes to the economic backdrop," Guernsey-based Senior Counsel Sarah Ash added.
"Technological and organisational changes have shown that working remotely over the longer term is a real option for many businesses. While Covid-19 continues to challenge working practices and requires businesses to be able to adapt quickly to changing circumstances, we are definitely at the stage where we can start applying the lessons we have learned for the future, and that's what our conference is about."
The three free webinars, each of which will start at 09:30, are:
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