the times | Monday January 3 2022 37Working lifeBusiness
recruiting, both in production at her
factory in Sittingbourne, Kent, and in
the adjoining sales office. It’s a
challenge shared by Claire Daniels,
chief executive of Trio Media, a ten-
person marketing company based in
Leeds: “We have had to scale quickly
in relation to client demand. Last year
I thought it was going to be a
recruiter’s market, because all these
people who’ve been furloughed are
going to be pissed off and there’s
going to be an abundance of
candidates. But actually the opposite
has happened.”
She said that a prime focus for her
this year had been on maintaining
morale and that this in turn had
helped to boost staff retention, as well
as customer satisfaction. “Everyone
says that happy employees equal
happy customers, but I really
do believe that a lot of
companies lost sight of
it [during the
pandemic].”
Although the
Trio Media team
has worked
remotely, in line
with government
guidance,
throughout 2021,
the company won’t
be giving up its
offices in Leeds or
London. Daniels, 32,
does not “really have any
issue with where people are,
but in our industry, in the creative
sector, we found that we work much
better when we are together. You’re
able to resolve issues for clients so
much quicker.”
She remains open to flexible
working when team members need
quiet time to work on a client project
or if they have personal reasons for
wanting to do so. At the moment, one
employee is working from South
Africa. “She hadn’t had a chance to go
home for two years and I said,
‘Whenever you can go home, I’ll
support you.’ ”
Remote working is not an optionfor the large majority of Anneka
Wallington’s team at Recognised, an
ethical jewellery brand that she
started with her husband in 2018.
The eight members of the company’s
core team can work from home, but
over the Christmas period she also
has had seventy-two temporary staff
manning the brand’s pop-up counters
in John Lewis shops around the
country.
Wallington, 27, said just before
Christmas that three people out of a
team of seven stationed at the vast
Trafford Centre in Manchester had
tested positive for the coronavirus
and at least ten out of the overall
team. That, inevitably, has had a
knock-on effect. “Operating pop-ups
with less people than we need is
obviously going to hinder
opportunities to have
conversations [with
customers]. It’s
been really
challenging.”
The well-
chronicled labour
market shortages
that have
afflicted the
economy far and
wide had already
caused problems
when she was
hiring her seasonal
staff this year. “We
started recruiting for
Christmas in July and I
thought we’d be done by October, but
we only had about half of them at
that point. We closed everyone the
day before they started on November
19.”
All that compounded an already
tricky year for Recognised, with
closures earlier in the year and then
customer numbers at shopping
destinations hit hard by fears of
Covid. Employees have had to adapt
how they communicate with
customers, said Wallington, who
counts Gary Grant, founder of The
Entertainer, the children’s toy retailer,
as a mentor. “I remember when theyut I really
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CCChristmas in Ju
thought we’d be doneof times and the worst of times’
said you had to start wearing face
masks in shops. We thought it would
make the biggest impact on how we
sell and how we talk to customers
because talking is so much in your
face, and your smile. But it didn’t
actually make a difference at all. You
have to talk a bit louder and really use
your eyes, but actually we’re finding
people still come up to us and want to
talk to us.”
She said that despite growing
strongly each year, Recognised
probably would fall short of its
predicted £500,000 sales this year,instead making about £400,000.
“Things can change and Black Friday
was very busy for the high-end stores.
Our revenue in year one was £25,000
and we took that in a weekend last
weekend.” At present she is
renegotiating the pop-ups’ locations
with John Lewis “to make sure we’re
in the highest-footfall areas”.
There were, Wallington said,
glimmers of light in the darkness. The
uncertain landscape has more deeply
entrenched the relationship with
Recognised’s Thai factory, for
example. “I feel like we’ve weatheredthe storm together. We never wanted
to cancel any orders, but we worked
with them to release stock slowly so
that eventually they got paid, but it
also helped us with our cashflow.”
Another highlight has been winning a
Young Businesswoman of the Year
award.
She said that the unpredictability of
the past two years had helped to build
her resilience as an entrepreneur. “I
ask myself the questions all the time.
‘Can I solve this?’ ‘Can I control this?’
If I can’t, I just have to get on with it
and trust that it’s going to be OK.”challenges in 2021, with Covid-19 presenting problems for staff and customers
AMIT LENNON