Posted Tuesday 17th March 2020
At Joelson the safety and well-being of our employees, our clients, suppliers and colleagues is always our priority, and we recognise the important role we play in continuing to provide ongoing advice and reassurance to our clients as to their legal obligations and commitments during this critical time.
We are actively monitoring the COVID-19/Coronavirus situation and taking all appropriate steps to help keep our employees and clients safe. We wanted to share with you some steps we are taking.
We have a team dedicated to our response to this pandemic and have Business Continuity Plans to ensure the continuation of our services to our clients. We are closely monitoring updates from the government in the UK, the Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization regarding COVID-19. We will continue to seek guidance from these agencies, public health officials and government agencies on an ongoing basis.
As our employees are essential to continuing to provide our services to our clients and on the recommendation of the government in the UK, we have put in place various home working policies and have now recommended that all non-essential meetings are conducted over the phone or via video conference. We have put restrictions on travel in place, are postponing large-scale events, limiting the size of meetings, and providing remote-work solutions.
We have implemented a policy of “Work from Home with Exceptions” for our offices and the offices themselves will be closed for the time being. This decision was taken in order to exercise an abundance of caution for the safety and well-being of all. It is driven in part by an effort to uphold our societal responsibility; even if many Joelson employees are in lower-risk groups, taking steps to encourage social distancing should help us do our small part to reduce the COVID-19 growth.
We are in continuous communication with our employees to remind them about the importance of good hygiene, and to provide them with health education and support whenever needed. We have specific quarantine and communication procedures in place should an employee be diagnosed with COVID-19 or be asked to self-isolate by a public health authority, and to provide comprehensive benefits to support them. We have a set protocol that has been issued to all employees.
The role our firm plays in providing advice and support to our clients in relation to their legal needs is incredibly important in times like these. All of our contingency planning enables us to continue our services in full as we have the technology and network capacity to meet our clients’ needs whilst we and our employees are working from home. Our firm’s values and culture of service, expertise and drive is particularly important at challenging times like this and our “always online” culture enables us to continue to support our clients in these unprecedented times.
We are taking every precaution to ensure the safety and health of our communities, but we need your help. If you are experiencing flu-like symptoms and have a scheduled meeting with one of our team, please let us know so that we can discuss options with you to ensure our collective well-being. As mentioned above we have digital solutions to enable us to have face to face meetings online.
We will continue to monitor incoming post, but we would really appreciate it if you could try to contact us by email if possible, as your communication will be dealt with more swiftly.
We have a team of experts who can help all of our clients and prospective clients in the current circumstances in reviewing contracts, banking arrangements and also with staff policies and communications and how to deal with any real estate issues you may be encountering
Please click here to access our insights (articles and blogs) that we have prepared to help our clients in these current extraordinary times.
This article is for reference purposes only. It does not constitute legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. Specific legal advice about your specific circumstances should always be sought separately before taking or deciding not to take any action.
