Doing More Than One Thing In 2020

When 2020 began we were filled with vim and vigour for the ensuing year, full of optimism for a prosperous year for the teams at White Label, and our valued clients and candidates.

And then it happened. A health pandemic took us all by surprise, threw our best-laid plans to the wayside and did its best to upset our physical health and mental wellbeing.

The teams at White Label have never been content to sit on our laurels though. After the reality of our new situation sunk in, we pulled up our sleeves and looked at ways in which we could best support our networks.

If nothing else, 2020 has certainly challenged us to look at new ways of working and forced us to adapt and become more flexible and creative in the areas of teamwork, management and employee support.

White Label has always loved a challenge, so using these areas as a framework, we set to work.

Extra support for clients and candidates

After talking to our clients, we realised that there was a significant opportunity to help them on their new journeys into remote working.

As such, we set about creating a series of guides and advice pieces on everything from remote onboarding, to video interviews, company culture, collaboration in isolation and managing their employee’s mental health remotely.

Some of our advice included:

• Online networking, while it feels strange at first, has significant benefits and allows you to reach even more people and expand your network.
• Creating a trusted network circle can help you to find common ground with others and protect your mental health.
• For the successful virtual onboarding of a new staff member, you should ensure the process is highly organised, integrated into your team’s workload and have clear expectations.
• Why an employee value proposition is vital to a business so it can attract top talent.
• How employers can support their employee’s financial health, and why it is mutually beneficial to do so.
• How a business can implement and celebrate a culture of flexible working.
• How to get the balance right when managing teams remotely.

We’ve received great feedback from these guides, and we are delighted to have been able to support so many people.

We also got involved in some of the big events of the year, such as Men’s Health Week and International Women in Engineering Day, to show our far-reaching support for our clients and candidates.

More on Mental Health

Here at White Label, we have always been very passionate about protecting the mental health of our employees, our clients and our candidates and it is a topic that is extremely important to us.

COVID has threatened to negatively affect many people’s mental health so we have tried to tackle this head-on and ensure our teams, and wider networks, are as supported as possible.

The recruitment world is a very social one so being cut off from each other has certainly been challenging. With this in mind, we have checked-in with our employees more than usual and encouraged our clients to do the same.

Some of the practical tips we have shared are:

• Mood scale: This Mood Scale was shared with the team at White Label during some specialised mental health training. Encouraging your staff to track their mood will help them keep on top of it and better understand their feelings.
• Online social life: Investing your time into finding an online community is definitely worth it; video calls with colleagues, virtual cups of tea and even online book clubs have all been ways we have made it through 2020.
• Get connected: Getting involved with bigger events like Mental Health Awareness Week can help you feel connected to others and give you a boost by providing you with an opportunity to carry out acts of kindness for others.

Feeling festive

To round the year off, we were inspired by Mind’s World Mental Health Day initiative of #DoOneThing and set up our Christmas Mental Health Campaign – #DoOneThingDecember.

Our teams have loved getting involved with this and it has given us all the opportunity to reflect on a difficult year and focus on how we have overcome it.

We recently spoke to two of our consultants and found that while 2020 has impacted them and their families, they are also emerging from this year stronger than ever thanks to a positive mindset and a new perspective on the important things in life.

So, let’s all try to be optimistic as we look to 2021 and realise that while this year may have physically kept us apart, many of us are feeling more ‘together’ than we previously knew to be possible!

Finally, a big thank you to all our clients and candidates who have supported us so much this year. Merry Christmas to all of you and we hope you have a fantastic 2021!