EXPERTS VIEW

YOU WERE UNDER the impression that if you had more than two confirmed cases of coronavirus you were supposed to report it as an outbreak, but when you look at the guidance it’s not nearly so specific. What are the rules?

teams may advise to contain it. This information to the confirmed case where possible and is contained within “action cards” that have making a list. been designed for specific situations. You can ● Review your coronavirus risk assessment, find more information on this by going to GOV. considering whether your investigations UK and searching ‘early outbreak management’ have identified weaknesses in your risk conDownload the action card which is most rele- trol measures which need to be corrected. TIP vant to your type of business and familiarise ● Consider whether you need to contact the Back at the start of the pandemic in 2020 there yourself with the contents. Public Health Protection Team. was a requirement for outbreaks of two or more In the event of a suspected or cases of coronavirus to be reported. TIP confirmed case of coronavirus However, we find ourselves at the SAFETY linked to your premises or activities, beginning of 2021 with a very high prevalence of the virus in recent PAUL MARSH Office manager re-check the website for the most recent version of the action card. It is best not months, and the bar for reporting SafetyAide to rely on one that you have on file in has been set higher to ensure that case the advice has moved on. public services are not overwhelmed. Another factor is that each country What’s expected of you? has its own take on its requirements. Although Public Health England They are similar in their approach but has gone to some lengths to produce below details relates to England. industry-specific action cards, they mostly say the same things. New guidance The general principles of what to do are: Information, on the GOV.UK website, about ● Confirm if the case or cases are in fact coroearly outbreak management has been created navirus. Review symptoms, the testimony of to make sure that people who run businesses those affected, and ask if personnel involved or organisations: (1) know how to recognise have had a positive test. and report an incident of coronavirus; and (2) ● Identify any close contacts of the confirmed are aware of measures local health protection cases in your setting. Do this by talking

● more cases are arising despite the action taken. ● the premises or business may need to close due to the numbers affected. ● someone in your workplace has been admitted to hospital; or ● media interest has become significant. Some industries have an extra reporting criterion: five cases over a two- week period, but there are quite limited situations where this applies, such as public venues. Check the action card for your sector to identify if this applies.

Note. A 'close contact' is defined on the action cards and includes those who have been close to someone now known to be suffering with coronavirus any time from two days before the person was symptomatic and up to ten days from the onset of symptoms.

WHEN APPROACHING THE challenge of technician efficiency, it is a best practice to start with the root cause. For Tallis Amos Group (TAG), the issue was not with the technicians themselves, but with an inefficient process.

TAG recently said goodbye to paper timesheets and extraneous manual labour, and helped their technicians work smarter whilst managing a larger workload. Ibcos spoke to Richard Allard, the group service manager for the dealership, to learn more.

Richard: “We have always been a family business so our customers can expect care, response, and friendly help. We are fairly strong in the technology side of things as well. We have had our own John Deere Ag Management Solutions consultants for a number of years. We’re also quite a diverse business. We work with vegetable growers, solid crop growers, and biogas businesses.”

“It has been in place since the late 90s. If you are in the agricultural machinery business in the UK, Ibcos is the only quality provider.”

Richard: “We were the second dealer in the UK to do it. We went live in early 2018. We had been looking for a solution for a long time; we wanted something that was mobile phone-based and had the ability to record hours.The link to Gold was what stood out. Gold service will put the hours straight onto the job card. If we had gone with any of the other systems, we would need an employee to get that information into Gold. That repetition of effort was not much further forward than running paper timesheets.That is where we’ve managed to see a massive improvement in terms of efficiency, and we experienced a reduction in administration staff as a result.”

“Accurate time reporting has been a tremendous benefit. We are forward-thinking with monitoring utilisation, so accurate time reporting is a big thing for us. The fact that we could invoice earlier has made a significant difference. Now we invoice on a weekly instead of monthly basis. We can’t really see any advantage in invoicing sooner than that.

“We’ve also seen an improvement in work in progress. Historically, it was the technicians who were the biggest hold-up, getting their job sheets written up and their time charts in.Now we have a much bigger workload and the technicians are no longer the bottleneck. As soon as they finish their job, they are prompted to complete the job in the system.”

“All of our depots other than one were on paper. That means timesheets and paper scanners. Then we would have to switch that over and input it into an electronic system. The technicians like this streamlined way of doing things.”

“I’d say that it made us much more efficient, especially when it comes to administrative tasks. As a result, we have been able to reduce our administration staff. With the change of invoices to weekly, we have a smoother workflow. " Now, with all of our depots, we are running with just two administrators, and their tasks include warranties and service work.”