You don’t need me to tell you about the impact Covid-19 has had on the mortgage industry and the way the UK is currently doing business (or not!).

We have been thrust into an uncertain time with economies on the brink, job security at an all-time low and anxiety at an all-time high. Now more than ever, as leaders and company bosses we have needed to prioritise the mental wellbeing of our staff above all else.

In light of Mental Health Awareness Week, I thought I would share with you what we have done at Twenty7Tec to try and keep up morale and support our colleagues.

The vast majority of our staff are usually based at our headquarters. Covid-19 meant that we had to adapt quickly to a new working norm to continue to serve our clients with the same level of excellence as before whilst maintaining the health of our high achieving workforce.

In fact, we were one of the first UK companies to close the office and instruct everyone to work from home – a week before the Government announced the enforced lockdown. This meant that we were able to be ready whilst others scrambled to get their IT functioning adequately; leading to less stress for clients and staff.

As a company, our mission is to iron out the creases from the mortgage market. In essence, we remove inefficiencies to make our clients’ lives easier. Culturally, this is also what we aim, I hope successfully (!) to do for our employees.

This attitude has helped to make the transition from office to home based working much smoother. In essence, we are now reaping the rewards for our prior investments as a values-driven organisation.

Employee communication is vital

As an organisation, we listen to feedback and improve where we can; we poll our employees every two weeks to.

We also involve our culture committee in the formulation of our questions and how we communicate about changes. Over recent weeks this has been essential – keeping communication open has kept us united as a team.

We have done the usual lockdown drinks, which is something that we already did when in the office on a regular basis. Though we have added a few bits including quiz and bingo, dressing up and dressing down – anything to add a bit of colour to the evening!

More importantly, we have gone out of our way to ‘check-in’ with colleagues to ensure everyone is coping: it is all too easy to miss the ‘signs’ when not face to face.

We’ve upped the amount of internal communication in terms of frequency and have recognised when things work and when they don’t.

We tried lunchtime chats with the leadership but found that people needed to get out for a breath of fresh air instead.

We have a dedicated Wellbeing channel on Slack which contains news, stories, and things to try in order to retain and augment our wellbeing.

Under lockdown we launched the Positivity Project whereby we share something every day that makes us feel positive. It could be anything! A picture of a colleague’s coffee, lunch, some cakes just baked, or even crafts created by children. We have even seen an outpouring of creative writing and poetry which is lovely!

We also continue to recognise and highlight hard work. It would be too easy to miss and not motivate colleagues simply because we are not all together physically. No matter the personality type, find continue to find a way to highlight and reward outstanding work.

It’s too early to report on the long-term impact on the mental health and wellbeing of our colleagues. Feedback though has been positive, and we are told that our approach has made this transition to a new normal easier than it could have been.

We are always open to fresh ideas and we are not going to lose sight of the fact that the weeks ahead are also going to be demanding. Hopefully, our strong culture, openness to change, and use of new methods, will allow us to reach our new normal healthy and happy.