EXPERT'S VIEW

Why the mental health of your staff is important right now

SAFETY

THE PANDEMIC PAUL MARSH IS having a significant Office manager SafetyAide impact on people’s mental health. The HSE is reporting very high levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. This means it is important that you look after your workers’ mental health and wellbeing.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) has produced a guide to address pandemic-related mental health problems, with practical advice on how to best tackle them. The free downloadable online guide is called 'Coronavirus (Covid-19): Mental health support for employees' and is available on the CIPD website. Here's a summary of what's covered in the guide? Helping hand: The online document gives the kind of advice you’d expect from an HR professional who has been immersed in the pandemic and all its implications for the last year. It’s particularly useful for small and mediumsized businesses who want to support their staff

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but don’t have an in-house HR professional.

Although mental health issues have worsened, they were already at a high level before the pandemic. In the year 2019/20, for example, the HSE found that 51% of all work-related ill health was due to stress, anxiety and depression, and that it accounted for 55% of workrelated sickness absence. The CIPD says that as employees’ experiences vary, managers need to be ready with the most helpful type of support. For example, those who fear returning to the workplace will need reassurance about the measures to minimise the risk of transmission, whilst others continuing to work from home may need encouragement to regain their work/life balance, or to understand your flexible working policy.

Which areas are discussed?: After some information about the likely effects of the pandemic on mental health and some legal background, the guide delivers practical advice under the headings: 1. Prevention; 2. Early intervention ; 3. Redundancy; 4. Managing mental health disclosures; 5. Supporting return to the workplace; 6. Returning from furlough; 7. Long-term homeworking ; and 8. Advice for people managers. Note: This guide goes beyond the minimum health and safety and HR requirements, so take from it the level appropriate to your workplace.

Good management practices: There’s a reminder in the guide that those in work, returning to work after a period on furlough, working from home, and facing redundancy will each need extra support in different ways. It points out that managers should encourage a dialogue but must not expect employees to feel comfortable talking about mental health when it’s not been previously discussed in an open manner.

Ask managers to regularly check in with TIP their teams to review workloads and how they are coping. It’s helpful to agree a timetable for these meetings to ensure accountability. When reintroducing staff to the workplace TIP after a period of absence, put together a short 're-induction' explaining changes.

Spotting the signs: Managers should have an awareness of the indicators of mental ill health and how to respond. These could include working very long hours, or at the other end of the scale, being less productive than usual.

In review: The guide focuses on issues such as working from home, return from furlough and the prospect of redundancies, with ideas on how organisations can help staff to feel comfortable with these changes. Consider how you’ll prevent problems with up-front communications and how managers will identify the signs of poor mental health and respond effectively.

How well-established Ag firm doubled its income in a year

Oliver Agriculture is a family business which started in 1823, and the seventh generation of the Oliver family that founded it continues to be involved today.

After World War Two, they took on the CLAAS franchise, so the business has been selling CLAAS equipment for more than 70 years. The company continued to evolve, and it got to the stage where it needed to specialise and focus on some of the key manufacturers. In 2008, it split the trading part of the business into two, creating both Oliver Agriculture and Oliver Landpower.

Ibcos sat down with David Jarman, Director of Oliver Agriculture Ltd, to discuss how this 90-year-old business expanded by three depots, bringing it to new heights.

Can you tell us about the business as it stands today?

We sell CLAAS, Horsch and several other franchises. The business has also expanded in terms of the area that we cover. In 2015, Oliver Agriculture took on three more depots to the south of us, making us a five-depot dealership. In the last 12 months, we’ve more than doubled our turnover.

How have the related businesses been operating?

The sister company, Oliver Landpower, has also grown. While still having roots in agriculture, it also has done other diversifications and is the mechanism for them to provide groundcare equipment. They’re specialised in professional groundcare, and also offer utility hire.

How would you describe the business in terms of growth?

In size of turnover, Oliver Agriculture has gone from £16 million last year to £33 million this year, total. And Landpower has also seen significant growth. In all, the group is in excess of £50 million turnover.

When did you implement Ibcos Gold, and what was the initial reason for it?

We implemented it in late 2001. The system that we had before was a combination of manual systems for parts stock control and an electronic ledger. It was quite antiquated and difficult to operate. So, having something that joined up all the different parts of the business, which Ibcos could offer, was the obvious move.

How would you say Ibcos Gold compares to what you had before?

It was a massive leap forwards at the time. It enabled us to process invoices more easily. On the workshop side, everything is linked together. This ranges from the sort of machines that we’re selling, to the wholegoods, to having the record of all the workshop jobs that stemmed from that machine. Everything became joined up, which made administration of the operation so much easier and transparent. Things couldn’t be hidden away; we’ve got better visibility today.

How has the system evolved?

Ibcos has moved forwards over the last 20 years, and it keeps progressing. There's no way that you could stay with the old systems and expand the business. With the administrative burden, it would be too much.

What would you say are the must-have features of a system like Ibcos Gold?

In the current way of working, having good integration with our suppliers’ systems is key to operating. This is something that we worked out with CLAAS within Ibcos. Recently, we’re partnering with some initiatives in the UK, trying to integrate interfaces among the dealers’, suppliers’ and manufacturers’ systems.

How would you describe implementing Ibcos across three further depots?

With good liaising between teams at both Ibcos and the manufacturer, we were able to have quite a smooth transition.

It has been a big plus point for us in terms of being able to expand the business. At the same time, we had to train new employees who had no experience with Ibcos in the past. With the support from Ibcos, we were able to achieve implementation, without it being too traumatic.

What’s your opinion on support that Ibcos provides?

The support team has been very proactive in dealing with any of the issues we’ve had.

How to ensure your business network is cyber secure

Cyber attacks are on the rise, and all sizes of businesses are just as likely to fall victim to them. Catalyst looks at the risks...

HACKERS ARE CONSTANTLY finding new and more sophisticated ways of accessing your valuable data, often asking for large sums of money in return for the release of that data.

During these attacks’ huge amounts of sensitive business information can be stolen from your network without you even knowing, and this can cost businesses both financially and with their reputation. It is therefore vitally important that you and your staff are aware of these risks and are doing all you can to prevent them. There are many best practices you can follow to help increase the security of your businesses network.

One of the best ways to avoid such attacks is to ensure all your staff are efficiently trained on the dangers of malicious cyber-attacks and how to spot them, by enrolling them in one of many online training courses that are available.

With an increase in all staff working remotely, hackers are finding sophisticated ways of accessing your vulnerable company data through your unsecure home network. Using a VPN to connect to your office computer reduces the risk of falling victim to cyber attackers. Talk to your IT service providers if you are working from home and would like to know more about VPN services and how they can keep you safe.

It goes without saying that one of the easiest ways for hackers to access your private information is by gaining access to your company passwords. Having a strict password policy throughout your business ensures staff are logging passwords in a secure manner and using password protection tools such as ‘KeePass’ or ‘sysPass’ will avoid passwords being stored in unsecure places where they are likely to be stolen.

However, nothing can replace the value of a comprehensive back-up solution to ensure the safety of your data. Data back-ups can be done in a variety of ways. Traditionally back-ups are stored on physical devices such as external hard drives, however with the advancement of cloud-based back-up technologies, back-ups can be done quicker, easier, and can even be automated to back-up on a regular basis without you having to do a thing.

Our recommendation to our customers is to do both, ensuring that if anything was to happen to one of your back-ups, you have a plan B ready to go. It is not uncommon to hear horror stories of businesses hardware backups to be destroyed along with their computers in a building flood, fire etc, resulting in complete data loss despite taking precautions to back-up, so a cloud-based back-up removes the risk of any physical damage to your back-ups.

Once a comprehensive back-up solution has been implemented it is also important to ensure the solution is constantly maintained and regularly checked to ensure the correct information is being backed up and is being done so on a regular basis.

IT IS IMPORTANT THAT YOU AND YOUR STAFF ARE AWARE OF THESE RISKS, AND DOING ALL YOU CAN PREVENT THEM

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Get in touch: If you would like to know more information about ATVTrac or anything else please don’t hesitate to get in touch.  hello@atvtrac.co.uk |  +44 (0) 1327 317 980 (Lines open 9am - 5:30pm)