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<p>HMRC’s frontline teams of key workers are doing a very important job to support
the UK; protecting people’s livelihoods, keeping cash in businesses, helping people
to stay employed and supporting families.</p><p> </p><p>The safety of their staff
is HMRC’s top priority. Staff who do not need to be in the office are working from
home, and HMRC are following public health advice to keep their offices safe where
services cannot be delivered from home.</p><p> </p><p>HMRC took steps quickly to enable
as many colleagues as possible to work from home at this time, expanding their remote
working network, moving work around, and training hundreds of their customer advisers
on webchat, which can be worked on from home. This means that about 75% of HMRC’s
people are working at home.</p><p> </p><p>Working telephony at home has been largely
untested and presents potential risks that need to be managed carefully. In March,
HMRC started a small-scale trial to look at this, and to understand in detail aspects
like the experience and wellbeing of colleagues doing it, the customer experience,
how secure and suitable home environments are for this type of work, and what extra
equipment and network capacity would be needed.</p><p> </p><p>HMRC’s original plan
was to evaluate their initial small-scale trial of home telephony before looking at
next steps. However, as HMRC prepared for a large surge in customer calls for the
Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS), HMRC decided that there was an opportunity
to push the home telephony trial further and faster than planned. HMRC have now expanded
the home telephony testing to about 7,000 colleagues, supporting CJRS and some of
their business as usual lines.</p><p> </p><p>The findings from this trial will help
HMRC to understand how far they can increase the number of roles that can be done
from home at any one time.</p><p> </p><p>HMRC remain focused on and committed to keeping
their people safe, whether in an office or at home, while also protecting their vital
services to taxpayers.</p>
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