It has been exactly one year of remote working for us at Redington
If we roll back the clock to March 2020, we had been in close contact with the China team for several weeks regarding their regional lock downs and the various government-imposed measures resulting from Covid-19’s assault on China. We also had our first few UK-based staff members in quarantine, having been on holiday to countries where the infection numbers began climbing while they were there.
It seemed that only a few days before, everyone was merrily going about their day. And then, from nowhere, a level of anxiety had crept into the office to such an extent that it no longer seemed worthwhile to cause so many people the stress that continuing to come into the office was causing.
As if a switch was flipped, we went from trialling remote working one day (11th March 2020), to being a fully remote workforce the next (12th March 2020).
While this one-year anniversary is a painful one to be celebrating in so many ways, with the toll that loss has inevitably taken along with the impact on well-being, we wanted to take a moment to look back on some of the good that has come out of all of this:
- As a team, we demonstrated that we could pivot on a dime, muck in together and get up and running to provide a seamless service to our clients and one another.
- We checked in with one another regularly to make sure that everyone was coping with the ‘new normal’ and, when they weren’t, made every effort to help and provide support.
- We continued our hiring, slowly at first, providing a remote on-boarding experience that rivalled that of our office-based one, allowing us to provide a summer internship experience when many were cancelling theirs, and subsequently a graduate intake, which was delayed at many other firms. To date, we’ve hired and onboarded 77 new joiners remotely (including 14 interns, 2 RedStart employees and 2 Contractors)!
- We continued to provide a top notch service to our clients, maintaining a Net Promoter Score of 61 as at year-end and were placed at the top of the list in the 2020 Greenwich Survey with a Greenwich Quality Index of 633 (with 20 evaluations), a year-on-year increase of 124 vs. 2019.
- Many of our clients benefited from the “running virtual trustee meetings” training we provided and have seamlessly moved to more frequent and shorter virtual meetings, improving engagement, focus, attendance and decision making.
- We didn’t always get it right. But when that happened, we made changes quickly. We were able to re-open the office in November for our Phase I return group, providing a much-needed option for those that needed it. And we look forward to re-opening for this group again from the 29th March.
- And last, but certainly not least, we continued to celebrate one another’s’ successes, birthdays, work anniversaries, mini-new joiners (all 8 babies and grand babies that have arrived during lock down and a few more – that we are aware of – yet to arrive) as well as 1 wedding.
When we look back at this last year, we will undoubtedly remember it as one of the most challenging of our lives. Hopefully, we will also remember it as one that focused us when there was so much other noise, stretched us beyond what we thought we were capable of and brought us together to deliver some pretty amazing results under unbelievably difficult circumstances. Many of the skills, practices and habits we have acquired, both for us and our clients, will no doubt continue upon our return to the office.
So, with that, we wish you all a happy 1-year work-from-home anniversary, here’s hoping 2021 brings us the opportunity to be together in person again soon.
