I hope this newsletter finds you and your family well.
I’m pleased to report that our operating result was good in October. We were on budget and had a good sales result. With the second lockdown now in force, we have implemented remedial action and have no choice but to see how this lockdown affects our business.
This week I attended a webinar to mark International Men’s Day hosted by TWICE (the Total Women’s Network) with a guest speaker from the Samaritans. You may recall that we donated money to the Samaritans earlier in the year to support the great work they do.
The topic was taking care of our mental wellbeing and this event served as a timely reminder of the challenges we are all facing during these unusual times. Looking after our mental and physical wellbeing has always been important, but never more so than now, when our resilience is being challenged. Liz Gregson will soon be releasing details of a winter wellbeing campaign, and I encourage you to make use of this.
We have also appointed both a Diversity and Inclusion champion and also the Diversity and Inclusion Committee members. The champion, supported by the committee, will put in place a roadmap to lead us to where we want to be, and I look forward to working closely with them on this. The announcement of who our committee members are will be made later this week.
As we attempt to mitigate the effects of Covid on our sales performance, we have also introduced our first radio advertising campaign with Capital. The adverts are intended to increase our brand presence in the North.
You will have seen that we recently launched Yammer. You’ll soon start to see many more business updates through Yammer rather than email, so if you haven’t already taken a look, now is the time to do so. Everyone has Yammer as part of their Office 365 package. It’s vital that we stay connected.
Finally, although Christmas will look very different for us this year and we’re unable to hold our usual festive party, I didn’t want to let it pass without any celebration. Details will be released shortly & I hope you take this opportunity to relax with colleagues after a demanding year.
Yours,
Dave
