The spread of COVID-19 (coronavirus) is an unprecedented global event that the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC) is reviewing on a daily basis, continuing our duty of care, taking all possible precautions and following government and Public Health England advice without compromise.
To this end, all absolutely non-essential staff are now working remotely and responsibly following the government work-from-home mandate. With uncertainty still surrounding a rapidly changing situation, the health and wellbeing of our staff is our highest priority along with business resilience and job security.
Over the past week, MTC has started to furlough all members of staff that are unable to perform their normal daily work tasks remotely from home. All areas of the business have been reviewed and the current staff groups now on furlough will be re-assessed every 3 weeks along with any further requirements for the business to either extend the current staff groups furlough period and / or increase the overall number of staff needing to be furloughed.
This is a necessary action in order to maintain overall business resilience and to safeguard employee’s jobs, ultimately ensuring that we are able to maintain our business and pick up pace quickly when the government starts to relax the current lockdown rules.
We hope that you understand our reasoning behind the decision to furlough staff and are also assured that the MTC continues to take action to minimise risk and reduce social interaction, as much as possible, whilst maintaining normal day to day business operations.
MTC is taking the following measures:
• Closely following advice from Government and Public Health England.
• Enabling employees with work-from-home capability where possible.
• Asking all employees who are able to perform their job function remotely to work from home and for visitors to postpone any planned non-essential visit to the MTC.
• Asking employees essential to maintaining site operations, and essential visitors who are feeling unwell to stay at home or postpone their visit to the MTC and advising them to review the governments stay at home guidance.
• Asking all employees over 70, pregnant, or with underlying health issues to follow Government guidelines and advice regarding self-isolation.
• Actively encouraging the use of digital communications such as video conferencing or online meetings instead of face-to-face meetings.
• Actively encouraging non-essential meetings at the MTC to be either postponed or conducted remotely.
• Face to face teaching in our apprentice training facilities will be suspended until further notice from Friday March 20th. Ongoing support for apprentices will be made available on-line remotely.
• Cancellation of all non-essential business travel and attendance at external events with an emphasis placed on finding alternative solutions which still enable us to continue with our daily business.
• Actively pursuing business resilience measures, including postponing all non-essential spend business wide, protecting staff jobs by utilising the government job retention scheme where we are able to do so.
We will continue to monitor the situation and update our advice to all stakeholders on an ongoing basis.
Please be assured that the MTC is doing everything within our power to continue to operate with minimum disruption to service and currently remains fully operational. We are also actively supporting the UK Governments call for suppliers to support in the production and supply of ventilators and ventilator components, actively collaborating with HVMC and the cross centre HVM network.
If you require any additional support, or further information, please do not hesitate to contact us.
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