We’re in the midst of a global health crisis and we’re all working hard to adapt our approach, maintain our capability and for many businesses, simply to survive.

The challenges we face are unprecedented and constantly changing and as such, we must too. It’s perfectly reasonable that initial planning and resources are focused on ensuring that business can continue remotely wherever possible, but people-skills are going to be vital as we now move toward ‘lockdown’ and remote working and we must do all we can to ease the strain on the mental health of our collective workforces.

As part of Westray Recruitment Group business continuity planning, we remain dedicated to maintaining our recruitment capability for both our candidates and clients. We are however, acutely aware of the need to monitor the wellbeing of our colleagues, despite the physical distance separating us, as we adopt government instruction to stay at home.

As a result of this, I’ve taken on a people-focused role in addition to my Commercial division managerial responsibilities and will act as a point of contact for all Westray staff as they work from home, not from a productivity perspective, but with their health and wellbeing as the focus.

We’ve written on the subject of Mental Health in the workplace extensively and are huge advocates for taking a proactive and empathetic approach to the mental health of our staff and this of course, is only heightened in the current circumstances.

In conjunction with Maureen, our Group MD, I plan to proactively catch up with each member of staff every other day, to chat through how they’re doing, check if they’re experiencing any issues with working remotely and to support them in any way I can. All staff will of course be able to reach me in a whole host of ways outside of those planned catch-ups should they feel the need to. We’ll all be in regular contact surrounding client and candidate efforts anyway, but I wanted to make sure that we had time set aside to focus on how my colleagues are managing with the very different way of working we’ve had to adopt, and to ensure they’re receiving any support they need in order to be happy and healthy during the ongoing uncertainty we all face.

Now more than ever, we must work closely with one another, remain vigilant to the onset of isolation anxiety or loneliness and do what we can to support our colleagues in these new, remote times.

I’d love to hear what you’re doing differently in your business to adapt to the challenges we’re all facing. Let me know in the comments or via InMail.

Best wishes,

Katie,