TIM’S VIEW

Uncertainty?

Let’s talk about it

Although the pandemic prevented us being together, we continued to provide service to clients remotely. Today, the anticipation of offices coming back to life and the comforting hum of the coffee machine brings back some normality.

I was at a meeting recently where we started to talk about the new normal. The debate moved from new normal to an uncertain future and that that is what we are all trying to get to grips with. The pandemic has been one thing but none of us expected the HGV driver situation, recruitment difficulties, energy price rises to name a few of the things we are having to deal with. I expect there will be more surprises as we all move forward. It will perhaps be several years before we know the full extent of what we have been through and how it has affected us all.

What does it all mean? All of these different sets of circumstances since the pandemic started are things we couldn’t anticipate. They come along quickly and are difficult to digest and understand and further separate us from what was relatively comfortable at the start of 2020. Apart from the need to digitalise all our systems to allow home working, as we planned our return back to the office it became apparent that having the option and facilities to work from home had become “normal for staff”. After consulting with all our teams we engaged an HR consultant to help us devise a Working from Home policy to allow the choice. In March 2020 we could not have predicted this huge change to the 9 to 5 way we had always worked.

With some working from home and some in the office communication is more essential than ever. Communication won’t solve the problems but it will help us all to cope with the uncertainty and anxiety of it all. We have embraced this by coming together over MS teams and to ZOOM but there is something reassuring about that chat with a colleague across the desk, or whilst making coffee to try and make sense of what is going on. This, for me is why it has been so good to see so many of our team back in the office, albeit working flexibly, and hear that level of background chat and yes, laughter.

It has also been good for me to get back to some face to face communications with clients. There is more quality to those meetings for both parties and it helps to discuss plans and to be able to have an input, to be able to put in place systems and forecasts to facilitate those plans, to hear about R&D projects underway and to have those chats about what is affecting us all. It should be no surprise that what affects one affects us all, in some ways it is reassuring, and if we are all talking it will be easier to find the solutions. If we are all talking then all will be well in the end.

Contact Tim Watkins for more information by emailing tim.watkins@randall-payne.co.uk or call 01242 776000.