It feels like it has been six years since we have taken shelter in place here in Massachusetts, I think it took us all a bit longer than we thought to become accustomed to our new normal. The weather certainly has not helped, come on SPRING!
From a personal standpoint, many of our employees are practicing social distancing, learning how to feel normal while wearing a mask, and being home with our families all day every day. And from a professional standpoint, all our employees are learning and adapting to working from home and some of us are navigating working from home with families. I saw on Instagram a few weeks ago this quote, “You are not working from home; you are at home during a crisis, trying to work”. Man oh man did this hit home for me, this has been the biggest balancing act of my life, balancing my kids, my work, my marriage, the house (the never ending laundry and dishes!), and somewhere in between all these things finding five minutes to take a deep breath. Some days I feel like I can do it all and other days everything seems to fall apart, but hey, tacos fall apart, and we still love those!
So here we are, awaiting May 18th to see if we will get the green light to start living our “normal” lives again. But with this new start, brings us new questions. How will we reopen? How will we ensure our employees are safe? How will we ensure our candidates are safe? How often should we clean, should we still have meetings in the conference rooms? And at the end of the day, how much communication is enough, and can it be too much?
What we do know is this… right now, everyone is reacting differently to these challenges and so as an organization we have made it our mission to stay true to our core values which are; Relationships, Opportunities, Commitment and Integrity. So how do we live those values during this pandemic? We start with EMPATHY, we let empathy guide us through this challenging time. The definition of Empathy is such, “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another”. Empathy is so important because it helps us understand how others are feeling so as an organization, we can respond appropriately to the ever-changing situation. We do this by listening to our employees, by regularly communicating with our employees, by sending surveys to measure our communication. We hold virtual Happy Hours on Wednesdays and celebrate wins both big and small, we continue to hold our quarterly Town Halls to celebrate new hires, anniversaries, ROCI Spotlights (moments where our employees go above and beyond). At DAVIS we practice Empathy every day, for each-other, for our candidates, clients, and for our community. It is the foundation of our authentic relationships; it is what makes us more than just another staffing agency. Just last week we launched a campaign to send 500 masks to our candidates and clients, because we want our extended family to stay safe!
There is no doubt life will never be the same after COVID-19, it will forever change the way we work and live. We have learned so much about ourselves, our organization and what really matters the most. So I leave you with this as we begin to think about moving forward, “In the rush to return to normal, use this time to consider which parts of normal are worth rushing back to”, Dave Hollis.
Stay Safe everyone and remember to be kind to one another.
