COMMENT It seems very apt that the theme of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week was changed to kindness to reflect the current situation, because never has there been a greater need for employers to lead with compassion and kindness.
In a few short weeks people’s lives have changed dramatically and although employers will have understandable concerns about managing businesses through this period, it’s so important we look after the people who make those businesses tick.
Kindness is a very important principle at LionHeart. Our whole organisation is based around being kind and compassion is one of our four organisational values. RICS professionals often contact us for help at the very worst times in their lives. Our business is helping these people, and their family members, through their difficult times and into a better place, where they can move forward with their lives. We also provide personal and career development support to help people fulfil their goals and live a happier life.
But it would be impossible to do all of that without demonstrating kindness to the team that makes it happen – we support our staff to support others, if you like. In “normal” times, we had already embraced flexible working: we have a genuine commitment to work-life balance that sees most of our team work at least part of their week from home; we support our staff to do volunteer work; and we understand that our people have caring and parental responsibilities and lives outside work. We also make time to have fun together.
Culture club
Our culture was recognised in our recent achievement of Investors in People at Gold level. I believe it was this culture that made it easier for us as an organisation to move over to completely remote working when our offices closed back in mid-March. At a time when we were bracing ourselves to be busier than ever, due to a potentially large pool of people needing our support, it was really important for LionHeart to not lose sight of those values of kindness towards each other.
In the first instance, we sought to make it easier for people to work comfortably from home, making sure they had the necessary equipment – and to purchase it if they didn’t already have it. Thankfully, because of our commitment to home working anyway, we had good technology systems to support this and a lot of equipment in place. We were already used to people being at home on certain days, which made the transition an easier task.
Top tips for kindness
There are many ways to show kindness to our people during these uncertain times. These are just a few:
- Creating a culture where people can bring their whole self to work.
- Always sharing tips for work-life balance and productivity – it isn’t just in corona times that we support each other to be the best “us” we can be.
- Reviewing how you’re working as we all adapt – we recently reaffirmed to staff that it’s OK to make themselves “unavailable” for a while, once we noticed that people were finding interruptions in their working day harder to manage.
- Be a visible leader – talk to staff, making connections, be open and real, understand pressures such as home schooling while working.
- Maintain connections on a professional level – we’ve brought in a monthly staff newsletter to replace our whole team meetings, which all staff can contribute to, to keep employees informed. Our usual monthly staff “awards” have been maintained as part of this.
- Keep the personal/social connection alive – one of the hardest things has been missing that daily interaction, collaboration and chat you get in an office. We schedule in a once-a-week video “lunch” to try to maintain that sense of togetherness, and encourage colleagues to take a virtual coffee break together where they talk about anything and everything but work.
Kindness is good for you. It’s also good for your business as it creates a sense of belonging and feeling valued. The world will inevitably change as a result of the pandemic. At LionHeart we hope that the kindness and giving we see around us remains and becomes part of business as usual for all employers.
Davina Goodchild is chief executive of LionHeart
