React, Respond, Renew – Workforce COVID-19 response

This paper provides a summary of how COVID-19 initially affected local government from a workforce perspective.

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React, Respond, Renew sets the scene for the workforce having to respond, within an extremely short timescale, to a completely new way of working. It provides a narrative to the shared experience of working through the pandemic in 2020. We:

  • flag the challenges and considerations for returning to a physical workplace, including the question of whether COVID-19 has precipitated the death of the office
  • outline the psychological impact of COVID-19 which we suggest will be significant for many employees, in different ways
  • moving forward, capture the issues councils might want to explore in considering renewal and provide links for various tips and guides
  • touch on recruitment and retention challenges, how COVID-19 might change what we mean by 'Leadership', and we set out how equality, diversity and inclusion will run throughout these issues
  • have set out to capture the issues and questions that councils might be asking themselves or might want to ask themselves, following this challenging period of time. 

Finally, we set out the practical and logistical support that can be sought from the LGA Workforce team when exploring many of these issues.