60 seconds with…Duncan Short, Director of Resources – VIVID

How was the re-opening of your business and how was it carried out in line with safety procedures put in place to allow social distancing? 

We never fully closed our business. Initially we reduced our services, primarily of our “repairs” activities where we go into people’s homes, but we continued to offer an emergency service even here. Pretty much all our other services we are able to conduct by phone or electronically. 

We got back to “full services” in July and in the latest lockdown have continued to deliver all our services. We were very conscious of Health and Safety and ensured all staff observed social distancing requirements, wore appropriate PPE and amended many of our process to be “Covid Secure”. 

We worked with the unions over our arrangements. We communicated our position to our customers and involved them in some of our decisions.

How is the general feeling and feedback from your team members and your customers now the lockdown is over? 

Overwhelmingly positive. We communicated well and responded quickly and decisively. We have recently done a review with feedback from staff, customers and stakeholders in which we got positive affirmation of our approach and actions.

Clearly there are always things we can learn and improve upon but also there are many actions we will take into “BAU” when that arrives.

What role has technology played in supporting your re-opening plan?

 Technology has played a very big part in enabling our staff to continue to work and support our customers. 

We gave laptops and other equipment to our staff to enable them to work from home. We migrated quickly to “Teams” and this has very much become our de facto tool for keeping the business connected. 

We quickly re-opened offices for those who had difficulty in working from home and ensured these were “COVID Secure”

What market trends are you seeing since re-opening? 

We are not seeing a great deal different in what customers are expecting as a result of COVID but we have noticed an increase of the number of our customers on Universal credit as the economic downturn begins to bite.

What positive lessons do we need to learn from what the industry has been through? 

Some of the biggest lessons for us is recognising that we can change and act very quickly and that you don’t have to cover off every risk. We also changed our working arrangements and we are never likely to return to work the way we did before COVID. 

VIVID website: https://www.vividhomes.co.uk/