NO SENSE IN CARING In the last issue of B4, Paul Ballinger, Managing Director of STL Communications, featured in our lead article alongside founder, Brendon Cross, the man who has backed Paul to help him drive the company’s ‘next exciting chapter’. Neither knew what would happen next or that they would lose vital senses when it came to caring for customers and employees. Written by: Paul Ballinger
“I was on a train to Haddenham & Thame Parkway on 17th March when I heard things were changing and changing fast.” Recalls Paul. ”We made the decision there and then to inform management on the Wednesday, make Thursday a home working day so that everyone was up and running from home by the Friday. We were able to sleep easy over the weekend and ‘come back to work’ on the Monday so we were productive….that’s everyone’s biggest fear…losing productivity. “Ironically, we had been preparing a disaster recovery procedure for months before lockdown so we could prove to ourselves that we could continue if anything happened in the office (building set on fire / something cuts us off etc…), not COVID-19 obviously! We felt that if we were asking our customers to plan for disaster recovery then we should be able to do so with some passion and accuracy from our own experiences.” As a customer of STL, we’ve always felt that warmth and deep level of customer care from any of the STL team that we come into contact with. It is, as Paul likes to say ‘all part of STL’s DNA’. But with a team working remotely and no opportunities to meet with customers, the wind was taken out of STL’s sails and the team had to learn how to care for employees and customers without the usual toolkit of senses, as Paul explains. “When everyone is working from home, you lose that sensory feedback of chatter, keyboards being tapped…. you definitely lose a sense when your team work from home. It’s a bit of a falsehood because that noise in the office didn’t necessarily equal productivity – but it was a reassuring buzz and ultimately you knew the work was being done. A lot of businesses had to learn to trust their teams during lockdown from day one and it’s certainly been an
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interesting learning curve for all of us. “So we lost a sense but had to remember and lean on another one….trust. Nothing changed from the person you pay a fair salary to every year, it’s the same person but why wouldn’t we trust them to work from home? Yes trust was a barrier to some, not saying for us, but we certainly had to trust the team to work. If you can trust them to work in the office then why not trust them to work at home? “We implemented some keystroke software so that we could see what the team were working on, what applications they were using. That gave us an idea
The disappointing thing “from our point of view as
management is that without COVID-19 we probably wouldn’t have been as caring
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of who was spending what amount of time on what applications , which ensures the right people have the correct access .As previously explained, we were up and running quickly…we had to sort some staff out with headphones, laptops etc…. but by Monday 20th we had everyone ready to go with the kit they needed. Laptops were going up and up in price…on the Friday they were about £1,200. We managed to get what we needed, but not at silly prices. “Another key sense we have lost is the sense of how the team is coping. Mental health is a massive issue, we know, so we have to try and get an idea how they are coping. We’ve had some fantastic responses from staff who appreciate that as an employer we care…the disappointing thing from our point of view as management is that without COVID-19 we probably wouldn’t have been as caring
as we now are, maybe because we would have felt we knew how a particular member of staff was, but never actually asked. So we’ve lost some senses, but gained more insight into how they are all coping just by asking the question on a regular basis…’how are you?’…and meaning it. Our greatest assets in the business are now remote from us and we’re, to a certain extent, ‘flying a kite’ and all you can feel is the string on your finger and you’re thinking ‘are they OK? Are they really OK?’. “Until COVID, everyone had a social life to dilute work pressures…what have they got now? Nothing. So we have a duty of care to helping with work pressures now, more than ever before. We had a buddy system at work where we would pair up individuals to provide support in and out of work… that’s been taken away from us and is almost impossible to replicate on line…no matter what you do, it’s just not personal. “But our staff communication has increased 200%. We are more connected as a team now than we were when we were in the office. We have a management call every day which sometimes last an hour, we have a company meeting twice a month which is embarrassing because we would only have two company meetings a year pre-COVID. There would be small team meetings going on in the office but probably only monthly. The amount of conversations and video calls now is insane in comparison. It’s a lot easier to get people together, it’s a lot easier to communicate quickly and accurately. Our e-mail traffic has dropped because we are communicating via this medium (video conference). I also think the understanding of what we as a company are trying to achieve has improved, after all , if the company doesn’t understand what it’s trying to achieve then you have difficulty communicating that to a customer. “We’ve changed from a company that is spoken to
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