The employment market will be facing some major difficulties in line with COVID-19, especially when everything normalises and everyone starts to get back to work.

Companies will definitely be looking at changing how they operate while taking into consideration the following aspects:

• working flexible hours;
• working from home;
• working new shift patterns;
• reducing salaries;
• cutting hours;
• increasing the use of technology;
• changing how they trade (i.e. an online version of their business);
• using different team dynamics (if necessary);
• re-training over new skill sets required from their employees;
• creating new job descriptions to reflect the increase in the range of skills required;
• hiring new staff that can function in multiple roles; and
• improving current products or services.

Employees will need to be issued with new terms and conditions that reflect changes in their working set-up and environment. As there are a lot of complications and changes to arise and to be rolled out. Employers will be needing to conduct health and safety risk assessments before the implementation of “work-from-home”.

Most of the options mentioned above will require business owners to carry out the change of terms and conditions negotiations with their employees or their Trades Union to gain agreement to any changes.