Good morning and welcome to this week’s Friday Brief
The restart of the economy is beginning to gather pace. Monday saw the publication of back-to-work guidance and Tuesday the announcement of the next phase of the Job Retention, or Furlough, scheme.
Of course, many manufacturers have been working throughout the crisis, as they have been able to, but the new guidance will inevitably accelerate the trend towards people working in their normal environments – while observing social distancing. Its important to note that the guidance remains that people who can work from home should do so; but the tone and emphasis have changed. Compiling a Risk Assessment is a big part of returning to work and advice from the Health and Safety Executive is available here. Your membership of the MTA includes access to HR and Business Support through our partner Croner. You can call them on 0844 561 8133, quoting our reference number 85655, for expert guidance and pragmatic advice.
The Furlough scheme has been an undoubted success up to now, with 7.5m people taking advantage of it. But the cost of the scheme and the necessity to restart the economy mean that it cannot continue indefinitely. There will be no changes until the end of July, but that after that an element of employer contribution will be introduced and, importantly there will be some an ability for people to work part time. Crucially the Chancellor did not say at what level he expects businesses to make up the Furlough payments. Getting clarity on this will be important to businesses so that they can plan sensibly for the second half of the year. The addition of a part-time working element to the scheme is something that the MTA has been asking for since the scheme was first announced and is very welcome but in order to be of most use it needs to be enacted flexibly.
During the COVID -19 crisis many organisations have stepped in and provided help where it has been needed. MTA Associate members University of Wolverhampton Racing have been making face shields and sanitiser and their professional Driver, Shane Kelly has swapped the cockpit of his car for the cab of van to deliver them. You can read more below. We can only hope that driving a transit has helped Shane keep his reflexes up because he’ll be in virtual action over the next few weekends in the UK Sim F3 Challenge, which will be streamed; you can find out how to follow the online action below.
CECIMO is hosting a webinar next week to aimed at improving the production process with the implementation of current and future IoT technologies. The webinar will also tackle the challenges that companies face when adopting the most appropriate IoT technologies for their needs. Full details below.
Thats all for this week, have a good weekend.
