With everything we have faced over the last year or so we’ve become rather reflective over here at apple hr support. In our team meeting this week, we decided to sit down and talk about what we have learnt since the onset of the pandemic. Whether it be positive, negative, tips and tricks, what not to dos, anything that has become apparent following our lives being flipped upside down with no warning.
We’ve put together a list of the top five lessons we’ve learnt that we thought would be most relevant, useful and important to our clients and LinkedIn connections. The aim of this blog is to give examples of how we have taken this time to improve ways of working, our lifestyles and our personal wellbeing for the future when hopefully COVID 19 will be a distant memory.
1. OUR CLIENTS LIKE TO KNOW WE ARE ALWAYS HERE FOR THEM
We are an HR company who offer both retained and one-off contracts so are happy to be involved whenever our clients need us. Even if we haven’t completed work for certain clients in months, they’ve let us know that we’re still in their thoughts and will be their first port of call if their HR needs become overwhelming. Business during the Pandemic has been so unsure for many companies, that often just a catch up call to sit and listen is enough to put their minds at ease.
2. BEING OUTDOORS BRINGS US HAPPINESS
We are huge mental health advocates and feel we are quite clued up on the classic tips and tricks to improve your mental health, one of which is exercise and getting out in nature. However, with the busy hustle and bustle of everyday life in the past, it was very difficult to actually make time to take ourselves outside, especially with the Great British weather. The Pandemic has allowed us to slow down and really focus on what makes us happy, which for us is being outside. We’ve been walking more, enjoying (sometimes) sunny days in the garden and most of all just taking ourselves away from our desks for an hour or two to give ourselves a well-deserved break. As a team, we all feel that getting outside has seriously increased our happiness at this time.
3. FLEXIBILITY AT WORK MATTERS MORE TO EMPLOYEES THAN THEIR SALARY
Our company has recently expanded to include recruitment as well as HR advice for our clients. From this, we have noticed in abundance that for many applicants and employees, work flexibility is so much more important to them than their salary. If you’re trying to recruit and are offering a very competitive salary but you’ve not had many applicants then you may want to take a look at your benefits package and flexible working policy. It is becoming increasingly obvious that employees have realised the importance of a work life balance.
4. WE ARE STRONGER THAN WE EVER THOUGHT
At the time of that first announcement from Downing Street explaining that the whole country was going to be locked down for the foreseeable future, I think it is fair to say we were all quite naïve to what this meant. “Oh, it will just be a few weeks, we’ll be back to normal before we know it.” Little did we know what the next year would throw at us. We think the main take home from this should be to look at what we’ve achieved this year, we’ve just carried on regardless of our lives taking a complete turn. We should all be so proud of our own resilience and adaptability which we may not have been aware of before.
5. FURLOUGH LEGISLATION HAS BEEN THE MOST DIFFICULT PART!
In quite possibly the most confusing year in recent history, we think that one of the worst parts about it has been trying to keep up with rules, regulations and Furlough Legislation. Don’t get us wrong, Furlough has been a great thing for the economy but it really has been a lot to deal with, especially from an HR perspective. Is it ending? Is it continuing? Advice was changing weekly and sometimes more often, and regularly at 5pm on a Friday!! So with Furlough set to end in late September we just wanted to say, we appreciate you, but hope to never have to deal with you again.
So there are the five things we’ve learnt since the onset of the Pandemic.
The team is happy to be back together, healthy, happy and ready to help your business in any way we can.