When the Covid-19 virus hit the UK, many hundreds of thousands of businesses were forced to change their way of working. Some businesses sadly did not survive the change. While others thrived and have been able to evolve throughout the crisis.
Here is a little insight into the Lentil Marketing response to Coronavirus, what did we do and what are we going to change for the future…
First response.
The Lentil family watched as the Covid-19 virus spread Westward around the World toward the UK. We decided to go into self-isolated ‘lockdown,’ one whole week before the official lockdown was put in place here in the UK.
Luckily, with the nature of my business, wherever there’s good internet, I can work; so working from home was no issue at all.
Working from home has become a norm for many businesses around the World and looks to be a trend that will continue long into the future. I’m no stranger to working from home or working from random restaurants, cafes or even from my car. However, working around a family who’re also, all in lockdown was an interesting challenge.
As a business – Lentil Marketing was growing rapidly during the early stages of 2020 and has continued to grow throughout lockdown… We have been lucky enough to be in a position to help our clients even more than normal and also offer help and support to the wider business community through blog writing, some of our blogs can be seen on the Covid-19 Toolkits website such as our blog about working from home.
We have also been helping to keep our clients up to date, sharing interesting and useful information that we found and offering an increase to our normal service. Many of our businesses found a need for daily updates, especially in the first weeks of the crisis; we were more than happy to oblige and help with this. Some of our clients found it impossible to remain open and had to cut costs, so we were happy to help them by reducing or pausing our service agreements to suit their individual needs.
This crisis has taught many business owners the importance of being flexible and friendly in a time of need.
Moving forward
Our clients –
We have continued our support for our clients throughout the Covid-19 crisis, sharing resources that can aide their own route to recovery and helping them to share their message with their followers.
Recently, we have been helping the team at ETL Electrical Solutions Ltd to build a Covid-19 safe working plan for their team to go back to work safety. We’ve seen that how people are responding to this crisis and how they are working toward keeping their staff and customers safe has had a huge impact on public perception of that business. Those who’ve not done enough or acted poorly during this time have gained a bad ‘rep’ for their business… It’s always good policy to over prepare and over perform when it comes to a crisis, that way, you’ll stick out from the crowd as a business that really does care!
Throughout the crisis, one of our clients – The Sun Inn, Calbourne have made huge changes to their local village pub… Going from a traditional English pub to offering a wide range of takeaway and collection services, roasts delivered to your door?! The team at the Sun Inn have also been offering an amazing local shop service for their local community who normally would have to travel several miles to their closest food store. They plan to continue these adaptations to their business long into the future as it gives them a whole new dynamic and revenue stream.
We’ve also been working closely with Seasafe Systems Ltd with their social media and sharing of their amazing work during the Covid-19 outbreak. From making scrubs for the Island’s NHS service and front line staff to cutting material used by Island volunteers to make PPE for the Isle of Wight Mountbatten Hospice. The team has also been making great preparations to their workplace for the return of their full staff compliment. From erecting screens between work spaces to building of a new outdoor staff area.
Our future as the Lentil Family –
As well as improving our service and building upon our offering for our clients as well as future clients, we’ve been pretty busy behind the scenes here at Lentil HQ, (which just so happens to double up as the living room sofa…) Some of those changes and work we have been doing to improve the business are –
- Sorting paperwork and getting up to date with our finances.
- Creating and building new services to offer to new and current clients.
- Improving our processes so that things are easier, not only for our own admin but for our clients too!
- Building new partnerships with fellow business owners.
- Networking networking networking… Always important but now virtually important too!
- New website – This very website is brand new and offers a brand new portal into the Lentil world.
- Plus so much more!
Our latest project has been to research resources for getting businesses ready to reopen while following Covid-19 regulations set out by the Government. This included looking for local businesses who are offering PPE, protective screens and POS for businesses to utilize. We have ourselves also completed online training courses based around Covid-19 and protecting ourselves as well as working safely to protect others in the workplace and out of it. The kind people at the Virtual College are currently offering a free course with a free certificate that can be displayed to show your determination to be a safe workplace.
Protect your business – Learn how to work safely in this new world – Be willing to change.
Our plans for the future will include –
- Working from home more often.
- Meeting in public spaces rather than at an office.
- Utilizing virtual meeting technology when possible.
- Continuing to work with our clients to improve on their own Covid care plans for returning to work.
Kai Davis
Lentil Marketing.