Virtual Forum: Business Recovery Post-Covid

good evening everybody and welcome along to ely cathedral business group's first uh zoom meeting of this year and what a sad thing to say oh here we are uh nearly halfway through the year aren't we and we're just logging on to say hello to each other but hopefully everybody's well just waiting for a few more people to join and then we'll get started so if you bear with us for just a second now who's been enjoying the sun today show of hands and there's a few of you in here yeah it's been fantastic isn't it stuck in the car today jeremy unfortunately yeah back in the training room today no problem at all so thanks everyone for joining us so a little bit of the history of the cathedral business group we're um coming up for 10 years old now i'm not quite as old as the cathedral who are here is edging on 1 300 years old but there you go we've got a bit catching up to do but we're a proud not-for-profit organization that's positioned in the community here in ely and the villages as a non-religious group to really connect businesses in our community together so our main purpose is to network together it's to help and support inspire and share each other's stories and that's very much what today's meeting's about so normally you'll find us uh around i'm just going to admit some more people into the room sorry it's going to happen a bit like this i'm not used to managing zoom on my own colleague here tapping away next to me to help everybody get in but normally we meet on the fourth mondays of every month uh and we are starting that again the next meeting we're going to have is the 30th of this month at poet's house so we're looking forward to getting back to into the real world getting back together again and doing some networking so that's one thing that we're looking for but normally what we're looking to do is hold these events both online and obviously face to face so the online events like we're doing today we will do around about once a month we will have some guest speakers along but also we will be opening up the room and together we'll collaborate to talk about things that are good things that perhaps not so good and generally be here to support each other we're also very big on student mentoring and also business mentoring and there'll be some more about that on our facebook page and also on our website in the coming weeks but in the meantime it's very much about how we can support our community how we can work together and today i thought a really good topic of getting us started and to collaborate together is let's look at business recovery post covid so here we are sort of 17 months into this pandemic and i don't know about you guys and girls that are watching i thought this would probably be six to eight weeks of pain back in last march i don't think any of us envisioned 17 months later we'd be 2.2 trillion pounds in debt we'd have an economy that's perhaps not as strong as we'd like it to have been and of course there wasn't so much worry about business and earning money and retaining jobs so it's left us in that pretty difficult position and i speak to a lot of businesses day in day out who are if i had a yardstick and put on there where people are there's going to be some that are positive for the future they've had a relatively good time in terms of they've adapted their businesses they've managed to stay ahead of the curve they've used the word that we've all begin to loathe now they've pivoted now that's one of the catch words doesn't it that's come out of this um they've pivoted but they ultimately that's exactly what they've done they've moved their business model to try and adapt and to change with the existing way that things have been working and there's some good stories um furlough again if we'd have asked ourselves 17 months ago who knew about a thing called furlough we'd have looked at each other with blank expressions on our faces uh it's been challenging hasn't it it's been tough however there's good news uh there's been some positive support from government to some people of course there is some that have been forgotten in this uh and we're not going to make this political because we're not political organizational business group but some people have been supported of course the furlough scheme has been excellent it's retained jobs it's helped people maintain their staff within their business and of course present prevented that mass redundancy the bounce back loan that's been great for a lot of businesses c bills has been good for businesses a lot of the local authority support has been very good the self-employed support system has been good for those that qualify so there is some support around there there's some good news stories but of course on the flip side of that there's some bad stories and i think all of us in in the room today can empathize with some of the businesses that we've all spoken to who've had absolutely no support those in professional services have been excluded newly self-employed people have been excluded from some of this but ultimately there's good and bad and everything so what i really wanted to focus on today was to open up the floor and just go around to those that would like to comment and just say how have you found things have you found it good what is the top tip for um other businesses that could adapt and what different ways of working so again i think a different way for me working i'll kick it off is zoom now i never thought i would communicate by looking down and screaming at people i'm very much a face-to-face person i enjoy the eye contact i enjoy the body language and when i first have a meeting with somebody normally you try and explore those the things you enjoy together so it could be family life it could be golf it could be cars and you get into all of that conversation before you go in but with the zoom i don't know if anyone else finds this but you're straight in you're straight into um right why are we here and it's quite unusual because of course i can only see your heads and shoulders and you can only see my head and shoulders uh and i assure you i'm in the office still i'm not wearing my pajamas just yet um but lots of people have found that draining um zoom fatigue is another word that will go into the dictionary with furlough and and pivot won't it that that's it's we've never had this zoom fatigue before where you're concentrating so intently on the person that you're speaking to that you feel tired but i'm going to ask um i've got to adapt my screen view actually because i can see all of you let's go on to gallery view so i can see exactly who's around so hands up who who wants to tell us about their experience of the last 17 months i want to hear the positives and the negatives and around us here let's have a chat just wanted to point out at this stage that we are streaming this live on facebook so um if there was something that's quite personal um there isn't just a half dozen of us in this room it will go to a wider audience who will catch up later but would anyone like to kick off everyone's gone shy everyone's gone shine jonathan's not even sharing his camera austin your hand up sir how have you found the last 17 months uh sorry can everybody hear me for one thing we need perfectly lovely okay uh for those that don't know me i run my own sort of marketing agency uh locally in elie uh i run the uh potato race for my sins down the high street in nottingham which of course didn't happen last year not sure about this year um that is a fun way of promoting agricultural and bringing farming into ely the main farmers i work for pr marketing wise are potato farmers who go out to uh in the main uh another uh sector i represent with a magazine called chippy chat 10 000 fish and chip shops who last march all closed their door and therefore we all of a sudden we have quite a few uh thousand tons of potatoes uh on our hands uh many of which were sold on the streets or people your father's adapted family marketplaces have had to very quickly adapt but the fish and chip shops who many would say were probably behind the times with as far as technology concerned very very quickly within two three weeks were open feeding the nation and thankfully we found the houses for many of the potatoes that we were promoting and so you know i hold my hat off to many of these people are all their sole traders on their own there are a few chains there are a few people that won one chip shop but the great thing was they all came together across the nation through our publication through the national federation of fish fries to share their experiences of how they did it how very quickly they went online because they weren't online they delivered but previously didn't have to deliver because people came to them um how they control people going into shops so there was so much going on over that space of time and i'm really proud of what they did nationally and what they're still doing to um you know carry on feeding safely every other restaurant on top shop so that's that that's seven for max holidays that's a really interesting point austin because i think there's so many retailers that are out there and of course restaurants and takeaways that didn't have an online presence and it was those that early adopted the website and the online selling during the pandemic and during the first period of it when i think when the first grant came out there was a lot that invested some of that money into an online trading and they're the ones that i've personally seen grow um what about repositioning themselves was there um any i mean it's quite exclusive if you're a fish and chip shot austin what else could you do i guess there's nothing else is there or was there any way they could change funnily enough rather than increasing the menu choice came down because many of them have started to introduce new things on the menu because um traditionally probably an older uh element would probably power fish and chips every friday enough 80 percent of us have fish and chips um at least once a year across the you know across the uk um so they did adapt the menus but just made this made them smaller um i think by the the delivery room that did a tractor probably a younger element um i've got many examples of of chip shop owners that had a had a five-pound delivery charge and had an order for one portion of chips for the country you know i mean and i sound like i'm saying it the young people just don't care about the price they just care about convenience when they have what they can have and when they can have it yeah um so hopefully that will help them you know move on and one thing we did have was lots of rates lots of commissions that obviously were higher than they should have been so that shift owners were paying 20 and 30 percent uh and now the marketplace is buying themselves so they might have been tied to a year with these people but they're now finding new people and it's a it's a vibrant marketplace that the the system developers they've got so many people to have you know to go you know hubs and restaurants that suddenly started to deliver themselves all had to have an app so it's a good it was a good market was a vibrant market price place in somewhere that that's grown a lot over the years excellent austin thank you very much for your input i'm going to put him on the spot vic um those you don't know vicadels vic is the new chief executive of the chamber of commerce for cambridge here now obviously vic you've got your finger on the pulse in terms of businesses um what have you found during the um last 17 months and bearing in mind i do understand how new you are into your role yeah um just first mic check uh can you hear me because i have been having we can yeah loud and clear um look you know what i'd love to give you a com a complete and comprehensive view of how businesses in cambridgeshire have been doing and businesses neely but i've been in the role four weeks so i i can't tell you everything but i will tell you this um we've been and this won't be welcome i'm i'm sure it won't be welcome but we've been lucky in our area we haven't been hit as hard as some other people have i mean i've been to a number of events you mentioned poet's house i had a face-to-face event there with members last week um and i asked everybody there you know sort of how many people do you know were affected by kobe how many lives were lost to people you know friends and family and nobody knew anyone had been lost and when i looked i i was surprised by that i looked at some of the numbers and i actually found that the metrics for cambridge here um uh a much much lower than some of our neighboring areas so for example we've suffered four percent of our population have been infected with covid whereas northampton for example have had seven percent um and and if you look around like you know sort of the england average is seven percent and that's a huge difference it doesn't sound much but it's nearly double the cases and my experience coming out of um london um hugely different no several people that have died as a result of this my next-door neighbor um family members uh fortunately not very close family members but nonetheless the lost but businesses have had to be even more able to pivot in some of those areas if i give an example one of the roles i had until january was to run the old bailey throughout kobe we didn't close for a single day so managing you know what is the number one criminal court in the world we couldn't afford to let it close because justice still had to be done and we'd have between four and 500 people a day coming into the court and you know what when you're up for gang-related murder you're not necessarily thinking oh shall i wear a face mask when i turn up to to see what's going on and being refused entry unless you're wearing a face mask is quite challenging but the reason that we did it is has been proven out we haven't had a single linked case in the old bayley in the entire time that kobe has been running so if you just think about those metrics okay we had to adapt we had to use three courtrooms rather than one courtroom for a trial because we had to separate jurors we had to separate the the teams from the close proximity but it's that sort of skill that i think that standard people well and i went to see a company in huntington sorry wasn't ely but give me a couple more weeks and i'll be able to have gone across the entire turf but i went to see a company in huntington and they haven't closed throughout the pandemic they've been working the entire time but oh my god are they different to what they are now not necessarily going online but having to find different ways of safely having people come to work my biggest fear is that we're at a point where lots of people haven't come to work but austin in your industry of course people had to continue fish and chip shops hey never mind once a year i would once a week have fish and chips and i still do and i was able to because my local chippy and the supply chain that fed my local chip he was still able to find ways to work but my biggest fear is when we start to say to people actually you are going to have to start coming back to work because not everything can be done via the virtual world i think we're going to find a lot of people that are quite afraid to come back and won't understand how much businesses have done to try to make it safer for them and how you can make it safer for people but you can't make it bulletproof you can't make it perfectly safe you can just remove some of the risks and manage what goes on um through a lot of common sense so sorry jeremy if it wasn't quite what you wanted but you know what my view is it can be done it has to be done and we've just got to all do it using a lot more common sense than uh sometimes we show one of the points you raise there vic brings me on actually quite nicely to the point that yes of course there is some employees that are going to have to come back from furlough and that is a genuine concern for many is my workplace safe has my employer taken steps to make my employment safe but there's also a selection of people that are employed that don't want to go back to work because of course they've been in the fortunate position where they've been claiming furloughs they've been getting 80 of their their wage but now they've got to go back to work and they only get 20 increase in wage but they have to do 100 more of the work uh and then and i i've heard from some employers um in the last couple of weeks that that's been an issue for them trying to get um staff members to come back and i guess that looking around the room here there's an expert in the room which is ruth buckley from truth hr um i know ruth really well ruth what have you got to say about that is this something that you're finding resistance on and more to the point from employer what do they need to do just if you've got some top tips for making the workplace covet safe and what are your obligations as an employer yeah so i was nodding awake i know yeah because i'm dealing with a case at the moment which is is proving very tricky um but because people uh what they whether they are or not but people are claiming that they're too anxious to come back to the workplace so then you you're tripping into um mental health issues which is then is that potentially a dis discrimination issue if you're not handling them correctly so it's not necessarily just a case of right everybody about to wear income um but i think the top tips would be community communicating well with them what have you done to make the workplace cover secure um and if you have got individuals like this this case that i'm dealing with doing an individual risk assessment because everybody's situation will be you know you know we've all been selling the same c in different ships or whatever the expression is but um everybody's had a different experience everybody's personal life is different and um we can't really judge how other people are going to react to it so it's best to have good communication and those individual risk assessments and then as an employer you've got evidence that you have tried to um do your best by that person and if then if they continue to refuse then obviously they'll be in breach of contract so there was an interesting conversation on this morning's breakfast telly and that was should uh should you be forced to come on um and have your second vaccination your first one before you return to work and what if you're fearful of that and there was a whole new debate there and there were some interesting points of view too was probably too political for us to go in tonight but um i it'd be interesting to hear how many employees that are asked to return to work will refuse to come back until they've had their um their injections um where does a employer stand on that brief sorry put you on the spot again but um if i said to my employer i'm not coming back i haven't been eligible for my injection yet can i be forced to come back how does that work yes so you could still require them to come back so long as you can prove that you've done your caveas assessment and you've got all the reasonable steps in place one caveat to that would be maybe if somebody's got uh particular health issues which would make them more vulnerable so if they were in that shielding category i would probably say that to allow them time to have their second vaccination before their return might be reasonable but again it's all very in it's all very individual based and we have no case law or very there is case law starting to trickle through but we've got very little case law to base things on so it's it's careful steps really yes yeah vic you've got your hand up what would you like to say yeah i'd just like to add row 100 on the money i mean everybody has got to be treated differently everyone's got a different risk and assessment to be done different journeys to and from work even if when they get to work they're in the same environment different health profile different age profile and we've had a situation in the past where we had members of staff saying they didn't want to come to work but their role was essential it couldn't be done from home and we went through very very strong communications with them all the time involving them showing them around the workplace to show what we've done but in the end it it turned out that they had to be let go and we felt that we were pretty safe doing that because we had done exactly as roofs described taking all the necessary steps that were reasonable you cannot put people in bubble wrap um and keep them safe in all circumstances but you must have tried your best i think to to be able to give them a safe environment and the mental health issues we all know that one is coming really fast at us because there are a lot of people suffering from anxiety anxiety at coming back but also because they've suffered from being at home working from home not been in social contact with people so i think we've got a whole chapter that we haven't even yet begun to to start to read yeah and it's almost relearning some of those skills isn't it social skills again we've some some people i know that have been off work for 15 16 months that haven't been in the workplace and they haven't um integrated with their colleagues and that's really quite hard and it's it must feel a bit like the first day back at school where you're going into a new class and you've got to re-equate yourself with everything it must be the same and and i do feel for some of these employees that have been in that situation sorry i was just going to add to that one one stat i do have is one of the bigger pub chains said 15 of staff refused to return from fellow and that's because they found other jobs so they've been working they've been getting their 80 percent furlough effect in this chain's case 100 because the company topped them up they've been earning 100 from their old employer and they'd found new employment and that's a 15 wow that's yes which is of course was lawful the government did say um that we were allowed to do that if you're on furlough you could seek alternative employment so um yeah that must be a challenge for that particular company because of course you want your skilled staff back in the workplace you don't you can't just replace those can you and that's a large number that's a large number and they sound like they've treated their employees really well by topping up to 100 so yeah but i suppose that you know people have been you know waiting or working behind bars for years i've suddenly found actually i prefer working in the supermarket or i prefer running this my own business that i've started during lockdown all these all these different things so they're just not going back to it no lovely anyone else like to mention anything else on that topic before we move on wendy what would you like to say and then i'll come to you just um just the the the whole team building thing as well if they do walk back through the door um um other people have been doing their jobs and it's like it's like the team will not feel the way the team did and somebody's got to be in charge of trying to to help them get themselves back into a team that they're all been individuals doing different things and some of them have sort felt that it's very unfair i was allowed to do this furlough and uh and and so i've had some time off with the kids um they then somebody else wasn't allowed to and and and there's a there's a team breakdown there which is inevitable when you've been away so long and everybody's had different things going on um just just uh i know somebody came in saw her desk and said who's done this to my desk and it was the you know and just there wasn't anything there nobody done a thing but she was in such a state about walking back through the door and and feeling out of it for so long do you know what i mean health issues that you were talking about yeah i just think team building is is going to be a huge thing that we've got to do and team building's been one of those things that's been around for a long time i've worked previously for companies that spend tens of thousands of pounds on team building exercises to try and get us all to work well together and of course i feel as i'm sure vic does for the smaller businesses that just don't have that available budget to be able to work towards team building using external things that's going to be interesting to how that's managed and when do i agree that the way that affects mental health is going to be a huge issue that we see unfold and that's something that we'll all certainly keep an eye on one of the things that we're talking about at ely cathedral business group is very much about how mental health is a big part of society and even bigger part actually of the business community so we've got some speakers coming up bit later on in the year as our numbers grow and just talking about numbers we had about 40 people registered for this evening but it looks like we've had some technical difficulties for our very first meet um but we will we've got over 600 members in total so we will be getting those on board and i'm sure when it's face-to-face the numbers will be bigger so i appreciate each and every one of you for coming along today but norman you had your hand up you were going to mention something what would you like to say sir oh it's just um there's people who don't want to come back it's similar i've been involved in large redundancy schemes and often people have taken the opportunity for something completely different um and probably what we've done is just nudged them they would have done it on their own and this is another again example that they've been away for 15 months they could have attempted to do other things and some of them have done them and i think i i don't want to be doing i didn't really like what i was doing before um i actually want to do something different and i found what i want to do so it doesn't surprise me 15 you know doesn't surprise me at all it's very similar and i'm sure others have been who observed redundancy schemes in the past when large numbers have gone walked out the door how um they are much more comfortable and better off um doing another job than the one they were thank you norman so moving on now i want to talk a bit about the sense of community and one of the things that we're keen to do at the business group here in the surrounding villages is to really work on a sense of community and we feel that one of the things that may have been lost in translation over the last 10 years of the business group and certainly and generally in society is the way that communities integrate with their local businesses and i wanted to ask the question what does a sense of community mean to you it's the first part of the question and then how have you noticed that adapt throughout covid um i'll kick it off by saying that one of the things i think that i noticed was around the clap for carers and the clap for the nhs and that i feel kick-started the sense of community spirit around near where i live in the centre of ely and it was lovely to see every week people come out and applaud the great work obviously the nhs had done but that seemed to bring that community spirit around and i think one of the most heartwarming things i've seen as i drive around the region and and again around ely is that lots of people will put on their doorstep um items for free free please help yourself and i don't know whether that's because people having a bigger clear out but who else has noticed that it seems to be that people are just wanting to give things to their community and generally be nicer who else has experienced that and what what what impact has that had norman you saw your hand first far away sir i live in i live in um lit with the cul-de-sac arundel um around arundel and such like which is just by the by the high school um and we're we're a three cold three roads in the coldest second it's a whatsapp group with probably must be 40 members and there's lots of appeals for doing things on the green we got a green which i think is crown land but he's regularly being mowed people have planted bulbs and when there's an appeal for something there it's um i'm trying to do so and so has anybody got one of these and the answer is always more than one person has one of those and you know i've got half of half a barrel of cement does anybody want it lots and lots of things of that it's daily there are things and especially going out shopping earlier in you know i'm going to the shops is anybody locked in you know because there are several people who were vulnerable and were locked in um do you do anything um it's almost like your neighbor with a cup of sugar but on a slightly larger scale yeah so yes there's been a lot of community and i think we're all going to have a big party on the 30th of august at the end of all this norman did that integrate people that otherwise weren't connected to communicate i think you know some people you know some of your neighbors but you don't know and uh yes i think it connected a lot of people who wouldn't have otherwise connected with one another you might know two or three your neighbors but this is collected connected a whole lot of people um to help one another and that's a lovely positive jonathan i can see your hand up sir and then they're not gonna yeah jeremy can i apologize no video on one of those was a technical problem but i think it's making sure i can't get wi-fi no problem um yeah we've obviously had the discussions very much yourself and i regarding this because community is something that my business has done for the last 20 years we've always been very keen to to sort of help pay back for what we've we've taken out people have always got a choice i run a chain of convenience stores and people always got a choice to go from my independently run ones to one of the major multiples of tesco express sainsbury's local etc so what can we do to pay people back and we've always been there's what i call checkbook community which where you just literally write a check and say there you go go and sponsor a local local team or something or there's actually sort of put back into the community where you organize such as and elie's obviously a huge beneficiary of the wonderful ely litter pickers group who've done a phenomenal job so i've seen a lot of the larger companies have donated litter picking equipment um and got and got involved in that way so my business was one of those didn't close obviously convenience stores were a key um we're a key need for all the communities we serve plus we've got 17 post offices in them so we didn't have um an option but to remain open and we've found the communities actually very much got behind us and our team are now seeing that they they seem to have gained a a a different level of respect within the community what they had before um and there again we're now going to start paying the communities back and sponsoring local events and holding various community functions that we can anywhere in our shops or near our shops just to sort of pay back the community to say thanks ever so much for supporting us through such a tired time that's my sort of take on it really yeah yeah jonathan appreciate your comment thank you louise um your hand went up yeah hi everybody this is my first time here so you're more than welcome lovely thank you thank you very much to be here because actually joining because of community so i'm self-employed um i run women's workshops and women's circles amongst other things i do and you know i during this time i've been shielding so it's it's kind of like you know community is it's like i just want one it's like one person would be good but i think that so for me there's something about as i come out to realize that you know i spent a lot of time in cambridge i live i let do live in ely and i want to have more community around ely that's what i'm really kind of focused on now so that you know this is why i'm here and what i noticed in my women's circles which did go on to zoom very easily that actually as well as the sort of people you know the women that used to come before we attracted actually quite a lot of women because it's i mean that the circle really it's about sharing and and during this time with mental health etc and people being in isolation actually it it it grew which was quite amazing so i you know i i think so for me there's something about having a more local community and i've and i've also really loved the sort of the facebook groups that have come up um you know eco ely or the one on the one on kovid where people just ask things and yes i mean i just think that is just so such a lovely thing and what i would like to see is that kind of nurtured and be a part of that how would you like to see it nurtured and are you talking about entrepreneurship you're talking about community um what specifically would you like to see well i mean i think it's community different things springing up because like for example i've noticed you know some very daring people starting new businesses you know on the high street and it's it so it's it's kind of i probably don't really know the answer to that question as such but i think it's through say something like this it's that we can actually support each other getting to know each other's businesses how can we connect together how can we you know i don't know what i do can also go in with what wendy does you know whatever i think it has to be something very conscious actually well there's a lot of strands to that isn't there louise because what norman mentioned when he gave some comments earlier about the whatsapp group with 40 neighbours in there and how they're all helping each other out we almost need to get that on on the wider scale don't we i think the vision that we have at ely cathedral business group and that's something that's been one of their values for a long time is to absolutely integrate that community so it's about not only businesses communicating together but how as an organization we communicate to the wider general public and and um private members of our community and that's why we're going to do a lot more activity around that um but yes it's interesting to see how the community will grow and it's almost as though we're rewinding i just said probably 30 or 40 years where there really was that community aspect because of course we weren't all doing this all day where were we 40 years ago we weren't on our phones and of course we weren't on zoom it was very much a community atmosphere and a community um that we're all a part of and we have lost that haven't we jonathan your hand's gone back up and wendy i'll come to you straight after i apologize no don't apologize i i don't know if you can do such a thing as pocket hands jeremy i've just done it i'm afraid if that is the case but yeah i think that's absolutely what's been said there is the community aspect is wonderfully really really quite i think that's if there is a positive from the from the pandemic i think it's how it has brought community so so much back together again we've seen lots of stuff a friend of mine he was he he very much went into the community and said i've got all the products here in my store but i've absolutely no way of getting out delivered to you and each little village in the area just formed a group that did all the home deliveries to the various people just went and they he delivered it to a village hall in each village and picked it up and it was all done with volunteers it was absolutely wonderful to see there's been some amazing stories around the country and literally there's there's been a amazing stories around here as well and i think that's something that business can generally do from the heart we we can we can pay back we're all our let's face it our our team members all live in the communities that we serve from our business so it's only right that we pay back in some way um wendy i'm gonna come to you next and then ruth i'll come to you thank you well i i don't know whether what i'm saying is sort of appropriate at the moment um because i'm um the community thing for me what took me by sorry i'm not making sense at the moment but what took me by surprise was when i was running courses and we never closed we had to run courses all the way through because i was teaching the the guys to do the pronation and everything in the hospitals and all that kind of thing the intensive care guys we were working all the way through but i had lots of staff on furlough so there were times when i'd be at the office i would have um maybe five people in the room we'd have to have very small groups and i was teaching but i also had to kind of run the office and what i actually found was that the group did that as well i mean things like i'd go to the loo come back and i'd find a great big pile of stuff in the middle of the room because there'd been a delivery and they'd signed for it for me and and and they were doing stuff like that for each other as well and at one point somebody said to me when you really ought to have the the phone in here the trainer i've got the office phone beside them in the training room you're kidding me that's what you'll have to because you've got nobody on the phones and it's really important that you take your calls you've got to keep going and so it was a if you like sort of an internal community but they also did it for each other they were exchanging things people were bringing stuff in someone would say that they needed something they couldn't get and the next day on the course that would come from from other people and normally of course it's all very formal everyone's sitting there you know listening to the trainer and being terribly good with their phones off and everything in in the training room and it's a completely different feel it was just like a load of friends together who would stay friends from then on it was a very different feel and still is still is i mean i i'm trying to maintain that now it seemed that taught me something i thought i thought actually this is very good for business if people feel this is a lovely friendly place to be then they're going to come um so maybe that was the wrong reason to do it but it's it it is just just lovely and and the things they did was just just amazing they're helping me run run the place lovely thank you wendy ruth i'm going to come to you and then austin i saw your hand uh up um ruth far away it's what's up wendy that's a lovely that's really lovely actually because i've seen that and heard that from other people just said suddenly people are just i think the senses people are just maybe a little kinder to each other yeah less judgmental kindness yeah that's a rule and but also louise you mentioned each wheelie and um so i i admin on the really facebook group friend of mine that's set it up um and um the eco really trashed a treasure so coming full circle to your freebie stuff jeremy it's just gone mental that side of the page um we get the number of things that being put up there and people feeling they can request things that they need as well um and people are getting responses it's just really lovely and that we have a before and after with that group so we we know we had it running for a year or so beforehand so we know it wasn't that well used whereas now whether it's more people have found it or people are throwing out more stuff i don't know my wife amongst many other people um started to volunteer at cathedral in january so it's probably many of you have probably seen me if you've had a job there she's seen people faint she's correct with people in wheelchairs she's parked people she's been inside her stickers she's done everything but the the the jab i think there is a call for some sort of celebration july july the 4th for people that have volunteered so that sounds quite nice so maybe we can do something special in the end so that's the first thing is what brilliant thing that is the volunteers came out of nowhere for that so keeping that feeling going afterwards volunteering for other things there's a whole bank of people that couldn't get into it so you know where is that where is that database where are those people how can we collect up that enthusiasm as we go forward absolutely fantastic secondly the stories i've seen especially on forgive me there are other websites out there but spotlight every day there are stories of people who have helped have done the collective rubbish they've done this have done that and that every day spirits were free i think not only they done something good but you see they've done something good so therefore does that promote you to do something you know that's absolutely fantastic and thirdly very quickly marketing marketing's my job pr is my role uh but marketing is bringing people together i believe um so therefore i've got many things that i do that have got people that want to slot into doing things and i do things like the potato race which raises sort of two three thousand pounds which you know we need people to get involved with i also look after the pr and sponsorship for kd for their panto 12 000 people gather at christmas hopefully fingers crossed this year we don't just do half a run but you know professional pantomime and ely fantastic you know you don't have to go to people cambridge knowledge wherever and that's just grown and grown i do believe they're doing open-air cathedral performance in through everyone's time so there are plenty of people around and i'm gathering more people as i you know i'm still new to this area i've been here only 16 years but um you know i'm gathering more people into my little chest of partnerships and and it's brilliant this place is just absolutely fantastic thank you very much jonathan i can't see if your hands gone back up or whether you haven't put it down for the last one but if you'd like to send english no sorry i didn't haven't put it down for the last time i thought no no problem that's all no problem so it's great to hear these stories of community and uh i suppose what's going to be interesting is when um it may happen on the 21st of june we don't know but if we go back to um full freedom and of course we don't know if that's going to happen or not yet will that changing community happen because i suppose more people will be commuting and places like eli will become more of a commuter city will it revert to not being so community orientated i think the answer that is no i think that will remain from what norman um and louise has said and again what you mentioned wendy i think we've seen this change for the good um so we need to focus on that and i know part of what we're going to do at the group is absolutely around that and austin meant it's uh mentioned spotted in ely and that's one of the things that we're going to be working closer with to make sure that businesses that are part of our organization can reach their audience and again vice versa so very much what our plans are going to be is around face-to-face meetings as i said and the first one um note for the diaries is the 30th of this month it's a wednesday now we used to meet on the first month the fourth mondays rather it used to be the fourth monday of every month and we will be returning to that fourth monday because monday is a great day for us to meet um it just happens that this month wednesday was the best day that uh poet's house could fit us in so we're really looking forward to some face-to-face networking there you must book on the website as you did for today's event is book online um because the numbers as you can imagine will be very limited but we're really looking forward to getting back that face-to-face and combined with the online way of working and i think when we all look at our um day roles we also see that that we've got a bit of this hybrid of them we've got a bit of office work a bit of zoom bit of being out in the field and i think that's here to stay um who who's found that works for them does anybody have a particular view on um they like it they don't like it and how do you see things progressing for your individual businesses and your individual roles louise and then i'll come to you vic so for me again obviously sort of a self-employed and you know i've been talking to the women that i work with and some i just can't wait to get back into physical meetings and then there's others who oh i'm still going to do zoom aren't you so you know i see my business as kind of like going doing both things that i think the word is hybrid isn't it yes um that i will be doing zoom stuff one to one and and meetings and circles as well as physical stuff as well um because as being said before you know people are just so different as to how they're going to emerge yes yeah thanks please vic what about you guys at the chamber yeah i mean look i saw some research recently that come out which i thought was reassuringly honest um at the start of this when people working from home if you believe them absolutely everybody was far more productive at home than they were at work um and that's fantastic but i mean i think just now one of us doesn't matter who it was had to go and uh meet waitrose at the door sometimes the dogs barking sometimes sometimes sometimes and i i must admit i always was ever so slightly cynical that everybody was far more productive working from home than they were working from work and this research that i saw was basically it was pretty split 30 said we've been more effective working from home and about 30 i think 34 said some day is good some days bad and the other the other batch um for the mathematicians among you i think it's 36 said actually no we've been far less productive at home but we enjoyed it so much more that we don't want to go back to work and i just thought that was nice to finally hear and in the end we are going to face this challenge where there is a time where some people will have to come back that don't want to and i just think that hybrid working is fantastic we even played with and i've seen some of the companies i've talked to did this rather effectively better than we ever did where they would have hybrid and face to face in in the midst of the lockdown last year when it wasn't completely locked down i think we had a period of about an afternoon in october where we weren't fully locked down no i exaggerate there was a window where we weren't locked down and people were toying with the idea of doing both hybrid and non-hybrid but it really didn't work the people on screen just couldn't get a word in edgeways and the people in the meetings were having far more effective conversations offline so i where where i stand is i think there's a space for this i think that people won't want to commute but i think we're going to find that there are times when people have to come back to work to be as effective as they need to be and to be supporting one another properly as i think um wendy talked about earlier with the team type of thing thank you vic wendy with your business being so hands-on can you do virtual training because of course if you're gonna um be resuscitating um one of the dummies you can't really do that on zoom how does that work for your business i personally don't do the zoom i do have two members of the team that do and they tell me it's going very well i haven't looked i can't do it i really can't but in the classroom i mean i do moving and handling face to face i do moving and handling and and first and other things as well and we haven't been able to touch each other so we have had some laughs can you imagine this is how you put a sling on yourself you put it on you um but no i mean certainly um well norfolk county council is is one of the main customers that like the zoom and they're finding it very very good they because they've got people from all over the place that can get together um to do it and our trainers are doing it very well i know um personally i i want to be in the classroom with people and i find it very difficult but it is going well and some customers do do like it very much indeed so yeah thank you very much austin people in pr and marketing seem to love all the enzyme online things and i say when i'm on a big zoom call where you've got perhaps 50 or 60 people in the room you can almost tell the pr marketing people because they have a really nice backdrop as you have and they've embraced it haven't they do you think it's efficient for your kind of business to go back to face-to-face or is this the future for you no i love people i mean i'm not sad i don't love meeting you on the screen but i love i love tactile so i like to be you know like you can tell you can smell you couldn't taste you could not like taste but you is very one-dimensional i'm a three-dimensional person so i can see the benefits of both um like what i've got so earlier on which i must say there's an advert for national fish and chip day which is this friday june the 4th so you must must have fish and chips so i'm going on a train for the first time they're going to see a few people i haven't seen for a year and a half i'm going to hackspeed new york to have some fish and chips so yeah i just i'm desperate to get out can't change this yeah just crawl out the little box vic i'm loving your uh backdrop there that's i think one of the absolute best i've seen jonathan i'm thinking that you're probably one of the people on the call today who absolutely couldn't do with virtual customers you it just isn't going to work for you is it so for you um you've mentioned already that you're working you've been open because you're an essential service do you expect to see an increase in footfall um once we return to some level of normality yeah we we're seeing it definitely seeing it come back so a lot of my stores are in bus stations so we're heavily reliant on commuters we're heavily reliant on people going back into uh city or town centers um so yeah as each lockdown as or each part of the the where they've sort of started to unlock us that's had huge impacts uh like 20 impact the last one uh the one before that was a 10 uplift so it certainly happened and we were hoping i was like everybody else the 21st of june was going to happen and just get people back in and hopefully see an uplift there but i won't say we're back to uh pre covered levels but we we're getting towards that now so yeah we obviously we we do we can do home deliveries we have been doing home deliveries um but it's i'm not overly keen on it convenience stores are all about being at the right place at the right time so that's that's pretty much where we're going from really brilliant thanks jonathan anyone else got anything to say anything else to add on that particular topic no thank you very much well it's just left for me to really then say that as i mentioned i've plugged it already with the 30th of june poet's house please come along it'd be lovely to see um that you've all got legs and that you're there and uh you're you're all able to come and and by then we might even get a shake handle or do the virtual fist pump um what time is it it's at 6 pm and and if you if you're all subscribed to our newsletter which you can do on our website um that'll be worth doing because we have had a gdpr issue where we've lost an awful lot of subscribers um since we've reinvigorated the database so i'd urge you all to just make sure you are registered there there'll always also be some details of the student mentoring and also the business mentoring coming up and i'm really passionate as i know a couple other people are on the call about the work that we're going to do with young people um in the businesses of eli and the villagers so watch this space once again thank you very much for taking part um our audience on facebook probably like a wave so if we can all give a wave and all smile lovely best group i've seen it's all because of vic's backdrop is what's made us all so happy but um have a great evening everybody thank you very much for your support and enjoy the rest of your evening thank you thanks jeremy take care bye

2021-06-08 00:43

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