- Conference
- 2024 National Community Conference and Seminar
- Date
- 9 November 2023
- Decision
- Carried as Amended
This branch has found that in many community workplaces since the COVID-19 pandemic, many employees now opt for complete homeworking or hybrid working (coming into the office two days a week) if they have the option to do so. Furthermore, many charities have closed their offices, forcing their workers to become homeworkers. Many community employers are small organisations with little or no HR or IT capability. As a result, there are particular challenges for them in engaging staff as a coherent team and for UNISON to organise effectively. And reps are very unlikely to have facilities time or other arrangements enabling organising activity.
While we welcome the flexibility this new way of working has brought to the lives of many members, it has created new challenges for organising in these workplaces.
It can be difficult in these workplaces to organise as staff may not see their colleagues in person much or ever. This creates difficulties for reps and members in communicating the benefits of joining a union and how they can get involved in organising activities to colleagues who might be interested.
As more and more Community workplaces choose hybrid or working-from-home models- it is crucial that UNISON understands how to support employees in these workspaces with organising.
This motion calls on the Community Service Group Executive to:
1. Work with CVOB and other branches to develop successful models to create guidance and advice for reps and UNISON staff supporting the community sector in effective practice for making colleagues aware of the union in hybrid working environments.
2. Distribute information for reps about how to avoid the pitfalls of using online workplace communication tools
3. Create workplace flyers that can be edited and shared online with colleagues who are entirely home-based employees
