So who has had to work as normal since pandemic started

[Sandgroper]

Still working as normal, fortunately not quite as busy. Early on, with the District Nursing team effectively self isolating (officially reducing footfall ) and the GP's not seeing anyone it was up to the small team I'm with to carry on as usual as well as doing everyone else's job! Now with e-consult up and running the GP's are almost back to normal and some are even stepping out of the practice to see patients! The DN's have had their vacc's and back to taking all easy patients off us...and we're just plodding on. As an added bonus we have a reorganisation (nothing to do with covid) due in the next couple of months that appears to involve half the staff nurses being permanently redeployed...I suppose if you can't take a joke, you shouldn't joined!

[kennyc]

still going into peoples home, as I have since it all started, hard to do my job remotely

All kidding aside, people need heating and hot water in their homes, it's essential work.

I like that

[Plumose]

I can't comment on the IT in your company but I know we had to work hard to swap from about 30 people working from home sometimes to about 700 working from home all the time.

This involved an incredible amount of work, especially as we had to implement new system so people could use their own computers (which aren't allowed to connect directly to our systems due to data governance etc.).

We are still rolling out kit to people working from home to make it easier and more comfortable and to make sure they can work as efficiently as possible along with setting up new servers and services.

And I am sure this is the case in large number of IT departments around the world.


There are poor IT departments/teams out there, I have encountered them, but don't tar them all with the same brush.

I am surprised they are letting people use their own computers. Our Company certainly would not allow that. Most of the people at my workplace are working from home. They all have a company supplied either a laptop or a desktop with everything that's needed to carry out their role. All the meetings are held on TeamViewer etc. The IT department has been snowed under.

We had to put in place a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure system which mean that even with the specific VPN settings in place all they could access is that virtual computer and that is set to not allow anything to be moved between it and the users own computer.

It was the only way we could get that number of people working from home quickly and it was felt by our Information Governance team that it was secure (and due to the nature of the work we have incredibly strict IG rules to follow).



You have to remember at the time it was nearly impossible to get hold of new laptops as everybody was buying them to get their staff working from home, so the chance of us being able to get hold of several hundred in one go was non-existent. Combine that with the time to get them set up properly (not long for each one, but soon adds up) it would have meant massive delays for the majority of staff.
This way we could target the staff that didn't have anything they could use first, and then start issuing laptops as and when stock became available if needed.

[Alpha1]

I get it. Most of our staff all ready had company laptops or they just took their work stations home until laptops were available. The Company I work for are paranoid about information being leaked or being hacked even more so because it's a research facility. They don't want the Chinese knowing what we are up to.

[Plumose]

I get it. Most of our staff all ready had company laptops or they just took their work stations home until laptops were available. The Company I work for are paranoid about information being leaked or being hacked even more so because it's a research facility. They don't want the Chinese knowing what we are up to.

It was decided that we didn't want them to take the workstations home for some reason, but that was above my pay grade

[Bovril]

As a paramedic the only difference for me has been the amount of PPE I get through in a shift, a temporary (now reverted) move off my response car onto an ambulance, and the brief period of quiet roads last year during the first lockdown.

[Pippin89]

Yes I have worked all the way through. I'm a MechE designing suspension systems for trains and other heavy vehicles etc. I would not consider myself a key worker but several train operators around the country wrote to us and said they cannot keep their fleet moving without our input so I ended up being a sort of pseudo key worker....
Feels a bit wrong being in the same pool as proper key workers, especially when 2 of my sisters are nurses and are full on "at-war" with the virus while I sit at a computer and design some parts to fix a train!