Paul Strachan, from the Gleeson Recruitment Group, patrons of Made in the Midlands was joined by Chrissie Gale from E3 Recruitment, Patrons of Made in Yorkshire for a live Q&A event focusing on Employee Welfare. The webinar was themed on employee welfare and took questions from Made In members from across both regions. From employee mental health during the Coronavirus Outbreak to the government's furlough scheme, the 40-minute session was attended by over 30 members from across both regions.
The Q&A began with an introduction from both speakers, who gave insight into how they’re respective companies are handling the ongoing situation, what general themes they’re finding across employee welfare, and how they’re working with the industry.
To begin with, both guests were asked to sum up the current situation that they find themselves in. For Chrissie Gale of E3 Recruitment, the mood was, in her own words, ‘up and down.’ Speaking she said, “Right now the mood is very much up and down. As a company, we’re pushing social and more broadly we’re tapping suppliers to the armed forces who are going on to help them with the field hospitals. Yet more broadly, and despite everything, we do see a sense of community and positivity.”
Backing up much of what Chrissie said, Paul Strachan from the Gleeson Recruitment Group began by saying, “Everything Chrissie said is valid.” Paul went on to say, “There isn’t a business in the UK that is not being affected by the Coronavirus outbreak. We’re one of them, and as a result, we’ve had to move to a 100% home working outlook. One trend I’ve seen is resilience. The resilience of the industry has impressed me the most right now.”
With employee mental health during a move to work-from-home, both Chrissie and Paul agreed that having employee downtime is an important rule to implement.
From Paul’s perspective, “At Gleeson, we have a meeting once a week where we make sure we don’t talk about work. We have social time with each other, and so far it’s worked well.” On that point, Chrissie followed up by saying, “I’m completely the same. From my perspective, senior management is taking on everyone's woes right now, and so it helps massively if we have some downtime.”
Moving on to a broader discussion regarding employee morale, which for both panellists formed a big part of employee mental health, there was one unified message. When it comes to dealing with the welfare of your employees during the Coronavirus outbreak, you need to almost ‘over-communicate.’
Speaking, Chrissie went on to talk about how E3 Recruitment are dealing with this. “We have a daily clinic where people can jump in if they need some extra one-to-one support because we think transparency is important.
This is a time when communication is more important than ever. It’s important to explain to your employees how the changes are impacting the company. In our case, we bring these two together, transparency and communication, in a Friday update that we will then follow-up on every platform we use, for instance, Slack and Email.”
Paul’s response to Chrissie’s view? “It’s all about communication. Your employees want reassurance that yourself (Management) and the company are acting in their best interest. But your learning as you go, and those that are not being kept in the loop, via comms are going to be the ones that are struggling.”
Again, much like E3 Recruitment, Gleeson also has weekly team meetings. “Gleeson Recruitment holds a biweekly video conference with upwards of 70 people within each call. To management, don’t underestimate the power of your role as this gives owners a platform to answer any questions.”
The talk then moved to a discussion about working from home. From the perspective of Chrissie, “All of a sudden you have parents with kids who are stuck at home, and for many children, they’ll not understand the situation we’re in, and for those parents, that’s a hard situation to deal with."
This then moved onto how you could implement a hybrid of working-from-home with the situation that people, such as your employees, may find themselves in. “Perhaps it’s about giving parents the relief via furlough to give them the freedom they need. So that parents don't have to worry about teaching their children whilst also worrying about hitting their KPIs at the same time. Thus you would take the stress away from them.”
On the other hand, from the perspective of Paul, “Some people within our team have been more productive than ever as they’ve grasped the seriousness of the situation. Everything is a learning curve for everybody as we are all in unprecedented times.”
Yet much like what Chrissie stated, some may need more support. “Others will need day-to-day guidance.”
In response to a question put forward by a member asking how to implement a work from home policy, Paul then moved on to give some advice on how, from a managers perspective, you can implement such a policy.
“Don't go into Work From Home with a question mark. You need to give your employees trust from day one, you need to set clear goals and expectations, and you need to be consistent with reviews. That’s the only way you can react to any issues and improve if needed and that’s by being dynamic and embracing this change as an opportunity to see if this level of dynamic policy is something, for example, you can do further down the line.”
This interview was the first in a series that the Made in Group is calling #MFGQuestionTime. These live Q&A sessions occur every Tuesday and Thursday and invite members of the group to submit questions to key industry figures.
Members can watch these events on-demand via the ‘Virtual Meeting’ tab on their Made in Group profile. If you would like to be considered to host a live Q&A session, contact [email protected].