The impacts of the pandemic

The outbreak and pandemic we’re currently in is something we will all remember for the rest of our lives.

It has affected businesses, families, us as individuals, and we think it’s important to recognise the impact it has had on ourselves and on Fresh.

As a business we’ve strived to limit the impact that it’s had on the delivery of our service to our wonderful customers and also our options as a business, and to that end, we’ve moved our training online, changed our client onboarding & sales processes and overall sought as many positives from each day as we possibly can.

Here are some thoughts from Laura and Emily about the impact that we have felt as a business….

Laura Leyland, managing director:

What a whirlwind the last 2 months have been!

I don’t think anyone expected how much of an impact COVID-19 was going to have on our families, friends and the economy.

It has been an extremely emotional and difficult time for all of the Fresh team and the business itself. As a team we decided that the only way forward was to rely on our core values for direction, which are positivity, team work, inspire, do the right thing and love it, and so that is what we did.

Despite being significantly impacted ourselves as we saw 95% of recruitment go on pause or be cancelled, we chose to be positive and proactive. By adapting our services to take our training online, we were able to still feed our natural desires to help people and at the same time gave ourselves purpose and direction.

We were reluctant to simply furlough everyone as we saw the long-term negative impact that this would have had on Fresh and the mental health of the team over the longer term and instead pivoted and successfully applied for a Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan.

We’re also supporting each other with passion, empathy and determination as we will come out of this stronger.

Emily Leyland, Operations Director

COVID has been extremely tough for us to deal with and has really knocked us at times. As an insanely positive and supportive bunch of people, we decided to not let this take us down, to power on through and use this space to be creative and innovative.

Recruitment has slowed down, the LinkedIn stats showed a 70% decrease and this is stressful but our Brand Ambassador, Evie, still managed to bring on a new piece of work!

A big part of this could be down to us attracting clients who are also positive and uplifting and want to be brave and work on what they can, who knows. We applaud this courageous behaviour and encourage others to do the same, don’t leave recruitment to the last minute like many others, strike now and show the world who you really are! You will be rewarded!

We love to help others and specialise in training both clients and candidates in many areas; CV Writing, Interviewing, LinkedIn, Engagement, Branding, Video, etc. and COVID has provided us with the opportunity to move these services online and reach even more people.

We haven’t wasted a single moment and have already conducted several webinars on these topics and each and every one has been greatly received, the testimonials have been out of this world. Having a positive impact means everything to us.

Yes, times are hard and we are struggling just like the rest of you, but, we also feel that what you do now, will really matter in the months to come.

At Fresh we are ambassadors of positivity, and this has really helped us to stay together as a team and also be open and honest about our feelings with each other.

Have an amazing week!

The Fresh Perspective Team x