I hope you are all continuing to look after yourselves and keeping safe and well? You will no doubt have seen the Prime Minister’s speech on Sunday and more importantly the Government guidance, this week, about how we might start to ease the current lockdown and safely reopen the economy over the coming weeks and months. I know personally, being able to get out more than once a day and the ability to see an additional family/friend is providing some comfort. However, I’m also acutely aware we must maintain a health and safety first approach as on a personal level my sister, a healthcare worker, has been diagnosed with Covid-19 this week and many others are still having to shield themselves, self-isolate or deal with challenging personal circumstances caused by this situation.
I hope you will agree that GC has responded with agility and empathy to support individuals and businesses throughout the uncertainty caused by the Covid-19 crisis and our role, as we enter this next phase of our response is to help support the recovery and continue to help individuals and businesses to build back better. Certainly feedback from clients, our Board and wider stakeholder partners would seem to confirm this and GC is being referred to as an exemplar across many areas of activity.
The Chancellor’s update on extending furlough– the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme – until October will be a relief for many businesses in helping them to prepare for recovery and for individuals wondering about the next few months. Naturally, we will be looking at how the changes to the scheme affect our business and colleagues currently on furlough and we will share more detail on this shortly. Changes for those colleagues on furlough are however, more driven by outcomes of conversations with commissioners and clients which is an ongoing and iterative process and updates will be cascaded through your regular service team webinars.
We continue to pursue new business opportunities and have seen some increase in tender activity. This includes submitting proposals to West Yorkshire Combined Authority to deliver business support and to the National Citizen Service to deliver an alternative digitally-led summer programme. We are also continuing to focus on the Justice sector with large proposals to deliver the unpaid work programme for offenders, as well as Rehabilitation Hubs across the North West, Yorkshire and Humber, now live. In addition, our future pipeline is beginning to fill up with imminent tenders from DWP for Self-Employment Support, BEIS for a national peer-to-peer business support programme and GMCA for a business skills brokerage service.
Our recently launched GC Consulting is also now pitching for and winning new work. GC Consulting is currently partnering our Employment Division to develop a £500k pilot bid to test-and-learn new approaches to helping those aged over 50 to get into work.
In my last email, I set out our initial approach to considering how we would reopen our facilities including the proposed changes to our workplace settings to ensure we are operating safely for our staff, clients and learners. This includes introducing social distancing measures with signage across our sites, temperature checking at reception, limiting desks and changing how we use communal areas. We have already implemented some changes at Warren Bruce Court and will monitor how this is working in practice, before extending further.
As the situation develops, and the ‘new-normal’ becomes clearer, we will need to assess your individual working circumstances to inform our workplace planning and policies for the longer-term. This is a detailed piece of work which is commencing now and we will be asking for your input into this shortly.
I know that following an extended period of lockdown, where we have been asked to adhere to strict stay at home and social distancing measures, many of you will understandably have concerns about restarting activity and what the ‘new-normal’ may involve. There will be wide-ranging factors affecting how we might be feeling individually at this time, from concerns around use of public transport to practical challenges around fragmented reopening of childcare settings and schools.
Thinking about our increased movement and public transport capacity constraints, it might be a good time to consider the GC Cycle to Work scheme. This salary sacrifice scheme allows you to get a new bike and accessories tax free and could save you up to 42% on the total cost. For those who may need a little extra help with a longer commute, there is a growing range of e-bikes which you can ride with no additional licences and are street-legal to 15mph, which is around 50% faster than pre-Covid-19 urban commute speeds for cars and buses.
Your health and wellbeing is a primary focus and as we look to the longer-term it will be more important than ever that we find time to engage with and support each other in new ways. With that in mind, we are introducing a weekly communication from Vicky Barton, our Director of HR and Organisational Development which will touch on specific health and wellbeing themes and the ways in which you can engage in helping us to navigate through these challenging times and maintain a supportive culture.
In the meantime, I want to take this opportunity to highlight Mental Health Awareness Week 2020 next week. This year’s theme celebrates kindness and we would very much like you to share with us your own random acts of kindness, or those you have experienced from others over the last few weeks. We have also created ecards for you to send to each other to celebrate kindness to each other and to ourselves. These will be available on the hive throughout Mental Health Awareness Week and beyond.
Finally, we would like to develop a short film with you at the end of next week to highlight what you have all been doing across GC to support your own health and wellbeing during lockdown. We’re looking for volunteers who would like to take part. For more information please email edi@growthco.uk. I hope you’ll get involved!
Best to all
Mark Hughes