IoD Midlands Spring

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Covid-19: Employee mental wellbeing
Covid’s last laugh:
destroying the team
As the threat of Covid-19
recedes, so businesses are
thinking of how they will
return to normal operating.
IoD Member Phil Simmons
thinks it could be as
challenging as the initial
response to the pandemic
Covid-19 has changed everything, from
the way we interact, to the way we shop
and socialise, the way the Government
supports the wider economy – and the way
directors run their businesses. Who would
have thought hand sanitiser would be
such a key product?
Every day seems to bring with it a new
challenge, often ones that directors will
not only never have faced before, but will
possibly not even have contemplated.
But now, as we near what we all pray is
the end – or at least, to mangle a famous
Churchillian saying, perhaps the
beginning of the end – directors are being
forced to look again at their operating
practices and the way they lead their
teams, to see what lessons can be learned
from the pandemic and more crucially,
how they can continue to trade successfully
in a post-pandemic landscape.
Top of directors’ priority lists will be
getting their people back to the workplace,
feeling reassured, secure and ready to
work. For some, the return to the office
will be a huge culture shock after 12
months on furlough or working from
home, and a lot of media attention has
been focused on how they will react.
But what of the unsung heroes of the
pandemic – those employees who stayed
in the office throughout and kept the
lights on, but for whom the media
spotlight tends to have missed?
We’re not talking frontline workers here,
rather those people working diligently in
the background in a host of sectors for
whom work from home was never an
option. How will they feel when the work
from homers/furloughed staff arrive back
in the office?
It’s a situation that’s been taxing Phil
Simmons of Simmonsigns, Staffordshire,
recently. His business was in a curious
position from the outset of the pandemic,
as he explains. “My board and I grasped
early that the pandemic was going to have
a huge impact on the UK, as soon we saw
the news coming out of China,” he
explains. “I made sure we understood all
of the Government advice and regulations
from the outset, to see whether our
business had to close.”
His decision was to stay open, with good
reason. “Our manufacturing facility makes
safety equipment for roads. Road
maintenance crews kept going through
‘‘
It will be a huge challenge for
those returning to the office...
they will recognise their
surroundings and the people
in it, but in many ways
everything will have changed
‘‘
the lockdowns to take advantage of the
quiet conditions. As a board we decided
we had a moral imperative to continue
supplying our products to those essential
workers.”
It was a decision backed in April when
the company became aware of open
letters from the Business Secretary and
Minister for Transport, thanking
businesses for ensuring the economy and
essential works continued.
As a result, the majority of Phil’s staff
stayed in post. “We furloughed a few
people, and had some others working
from home, particularly our sales team.
But we kept them focused on the job
throughout, looking at our marketing and
sales strategies.”
So for Phil, the task of reintegrating his
workforce as a united body is one of
getting the handful of outliers back into
the team. “But it will be a huge challenge
for them. They will recognise the office,
and the people in it, but in many ways
everything has changed. The lay out will
be different, where people sit and how
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