As we pass the milestone of 100 days since lockdown started, it seems like a good time to take stock and reflect on how life has changed for us as a business over these past three months.
We are seeing lockdown ease across the UK, many businesses are now allowed to open their doors for the first time since March. For many thoughts are turning to economic survival as they try to adapt to a new normal. This week chancellor Rishi Sunak has delivered his summer economic plan with the aim of supporting economic recovery for the UK. All eyes on the every important Autumn budget where what was in the plan in March may certainly be up for debate.
Stay home and carry on
Here at GovGrant, we were fortunate to be in a better situation than many. We all transitioned to working-from-home relatively smoothly making use of systems and technology already in place. There were individual challenges with homeschooling, care responsibilities and home office limitations. But we got through most of those with tolerance, flexibility and a good sense of humour.
Throughout we’ve continued to offer our usual service to clients, with the exception of “walking the floors”. We are still processing claims and will follow up with site meetings as soon as it’s safe to do so.
Planning for the future
This has meant that we haven’t had to furlough any of our staff, which has been a huge relief. Indeed we’re actually looking to recruit new people into technical, tax, and business development roles. This continues to be a period of growth for us and we’re keen to get skilled people on board as soon as possible.
We have tentatively started to put measures in the St Albans office to ensure it is Covid-secure for staff that need to return. It has involved signage, PPE, a new cleaning regime and of course social distancing. This will be a checklist you will all be familiar with as we get used to this new normal. Equally, we are using them as an opportunity to really reflect and change how we work as it should reflect our business ethos and culture. We are success aligned and are focused on outcomes and we are looking to embed that into employee value proposition.
Where we are now
We count ourselves fortunate to be able to do what we do each day. There is a clear and growing demand from our clients and we continue to offer flexible service to respond to their individual circumstances.
And I personally count myself lucky to have such a great team around me. GovGrant has always been about more than the office and I thank all of our staff for stepping up and remaining committed even in the face of wider challenges.
To find out more about our Covid response, please visit our dedicated page.
