What makes a great team?
Climalife UK
On 23rd March 2020, in a television address to the nation, the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson
announced a UK-wide partial lockdown to contain the spread of COVID-19.
The public were instructed to stay at home, except for very limited purposes, such as shopping, exercise, medical needs or to travel to / from work when absolutely necessary. If people could do so, they were encouraged to work from home.
Hannah Morley, Executive Assistant at Climalife UK talks about how the team reacted quickly to the crisis and the rapidly changing circumstances.
“What an unprecedented few months we’ve all had! We can safely say the world has never been so mutually affected by one common problem as we have all been with COVID-19.
”Ahead of the government’s advice, Climalife UK working closely with its parent company The Dehon Group, took the decision on 17th March, to move the entire workforce to remote working.
Hannah explains, “With a lot of our workforce already set up with the ability to work from home, we set out to quickly equip the remainder of staff with the relevant technology to be able to continue to do their job working from home. It was essential that we maintained excellent customer service standards and all obligations to both our customers and suppliers.”
Within one day of making the decision to close the office, the entire UK workforce were working from home, maintaining “business as usual”.
Supporting our team
“We wanted to ensure that our staff felt just as supported working from home as they would normally in the office – even more so perhaps, so initially we set up daily video catch up calls with the entire team.”
As the team settled into new routines, the frequency of catch ups was reduced, however it was essential to keep them running to maintain the important connection with one another.
A “Virtual Breakout room” was created and designed to replicate our recently refurbished breakout area in the new office.
The virtual space was designed for staff to visit when they needed some quiet time away from their work (eg for lunch or a coffee break, as they would normally do in the office).
This site continues to be available and has links to mental wellbeing support, meditation apps, mindfulness exercises and even forums forstaff to recommend books and tv/films. The weekly Friday afternoon quizzes have been great light relief for everyone – each week one member of the team organises a new quiz and it’s brought a bit of fun to the team at a difficult time for all.
The transition back to office based working
Hannah explains “More recently, we have started re-introducing the team back to the office, following government health and safety guidelines and a staggered approach. Smaller numbers have been coming into the office and we have a rotating schedule with some working from home and some in the office.
It’s going really well and after a period of adjustment, is starting to become our “new normal”. We will continue with the flexible approach as if we need to again follow strict government guidelines, then we know we have the ability and resources in place.”
Looking ahead
Hannah concludes:
“We are a team that really cares for one another and also recognise the difficulties our industry friends may have faced over the last few months. Things are starting to change and perhaps a new brighter normal is evolving. We hope this will bring new and exciting opportunities to the industry and wish our customers, partners and industry friends good health and every success for the future.”
