The coronavirus pandemic continues to prove incredibly challenging for businesses all around the world. However, it has also served to highlight the importance of something that is often taken for granted, sometimes seen as an afterthought or even an inconvenience – cleaning.

What is sustainability?

Sustainability has had an increasingly significant impact in the minds of both consumers and businesses in the past few decades. Consumers now more than ever expect the businesses they buy from to acknowledge their corporate social responsibility and maintain overt sustainability practices. In 2019 the GlobalWebIndex found that “42% of U.S. and UK consumers say products that use sustainable materials are important in their day-to-day purchasing”. This is important as data from the WorldBank in 2018 shows that these countries are respectively the fifth and first largest consumer markets globally. Even more crucial is the 2020 reporting from GlobalWebIndex which found that “84% [of consumers] say a poor environmental track record would or might cause them to stop buying from a brand”.

Though many people around the country have returned to work, much of the nation’s workforce still finds itself working from home and adapting to the many changes and challenges this brings. When leading a remote team, you have a responsibility to make sure everybody copes with this transition as well as possible. Here are three tips to help you do so…

More time for household jobs, no need to put on a tie and smart shoes and no rush hour traffic to contend with at the end of the day – the positives of working from home are many, and it’s easy to see why some people prefer it to, for example, an office environment.

However, remote working does present several challenges, one of which is the task of maintaining a healthy work-life balance. Working from home means the onus is on you to make sure you find the right blend of productivity and relaxation, so here are a few simple tips that are sure to help you do just that!

The current challenges around Covid-19 have limited the chances of having face to face interactions, meaning LinkedIn is more relevant than ever. With millions of professional profiles, LinkedIn is a great tool for networking, researching companies and jobs, and for gaining exposure to potential opportunities.

If you are looking to present yourself in the best way to potential employers and recruiters, here are a few tips to help enhance your LinkedIn profile:

The Covid-19 pandemic has forced many businesses to quickly adapt to remote working. Although the government has started encouraging people to return to work safely where they can, many believe that this transition to remote working will be long term.

Remote working has benefitted employees in saving time and money commuting, as well as increasing flexibility and productivity. However, working remotely can feel isolating and leave some employees feeling detached from the team.

To prevent this, it’s important for managers to know how to maintain that sense of togetherness, that once glued everyone together within the office environment, and use this to create a healthy culture amongst the team when working remotely.

Here we provide a few tips on how this can be done…

You’ve spent weeks advertising, cv sifting, interviewing (all through a pandemic!) and have finally found the person you want on your team! You may think your job as the hiring manager is done, but onboarding your new staff member is a vital step to their first impressions of the business and how well they will fit into the team. Get it wrong, and you could be recruiting all over again in a few months!

The last few months has seen a huge number of recruitment failures, excellent candidates starting roles and leaving within the first 3 months. Almost all of these mentioned poor onboard/first impressions as one of the main reasons for their departure. With Covid-19 being at the forefront of everyone’s minds, new starters have not been given the tools they need to succeed and feel valued and this has resulted in them exiting the business.

Follow our tips below to give your new team member a brilliant induction and let them spread the word about how fantastic their new workplace is.

300 North Step Challenge

The Covid-19 pandemic has been a challenge for everyone this year in many ways. Working from home, while convenient for some has been hard for others and to some degree everyone has felt more isolated during this time. At 300 North we pride ourselves in having a strong work culture and when this began to wain through remote working, we knew we needed to do something to inject a bit of fun back into the team.