Hi O'D I'd start by giving shared access rights to emails, with decisions as to who has access rights dependent on issues such as who gets the confidential stuff.

Firstly I must state that I am definitely not an “IT” expert by any stretch of the imagination; but can your phones and/or email accounts not be set to redirect to alternative phones/email accounts as and when necessary?

Our wellbeing assistant hold a Health & Safety Mailbox, which can be used when one of our regional bods are away, she can then transfer any queries to the closest advisor.

I set up a system a year or two ago for a collaborating company of mine that required a single email address for H&S. safety@xyz.com was understood by everyone, and was accessible to all of those who required access without the complexity of setting up access rights to shared accounts. The IT support liked the approach, then took it a stage further. This allowed us to route all email traffic through safety@xyz.com but with replies tagged with the senders name myname.safety@xyz.com. This provided complete traceability. This latter function required some software enhancement and carried a modest annual licensing fee but was worth it. For a smaller organisation or where that degree of traceability is not necessary, the single email address with everyone dipping into a single account worked well enough.