Covid-19 – Practical advice for candidates and clients

Covid-19 is undoubtedly affecting everybody around the world. At Apsida we are committed to providing our clients and candidates with helpful and factual information to enable them to navigate through these uncertain times. Due to being an agile team, we have personally adapted quickly to the changes here in the UK and are completely remote and fully-functioning.

We want to equip our clients and candidates with the same agility, as well as keeping things positive above anything else! We are lucky to be able to speak to people on a daily basis who are informed on what is going on with Covid-19, as the Life Sciences sector is in a privileged position. Yesterday it was announced by FierceBiotech that the UK government is backing a Covid-19 vaccine trial due to start in April, which is brilliant news. Our industry is at the forefront of this pandemic, and we are incredibly proud to be servicing candidates and clients at this time.

In this article, we are going to be sharing with you what we are doing to support the market, as well as online tools that businesses (in or outside Life Sciences) can use to adjust to remote working. 

Business as usual

For us, business as usual is imperative even in the current climate. We want to make it clear to candidates that companies are hiring, and we are able to provide you with real-time updates as we are having conversations around their recruitment strategies every day. If you are looking for advice on what is going on in your sector, do not hesitate to reach out to one of our specialists for more information. For our clients, they are being exposed to talent that they may have not had access to before due to redundancies and candidates being open to exploring opportunities. We are acknowledging that hiring may pause for now, but clients still have the ability to pipeline high-quality talent for when they are in a position to onboard again.

Working remotely?

Before Covid-19 had reached Europe, China had already been forced into a remote model, with a lot of businesses experiencing this for the first time and struggling to adapt. Whether you are a company of less than fifty, or a growing department within a Biotechnology, you will all be working remotely and looking to continue projects where physically possible. If this is your first experience, it can be a difficult adjustment. Various studies have been conducted on the benefits of remote working, showing increased productivity and employee engagement. An article released by Forbes we found encapsulated a lot of the benefits, as well as building an innovative culture and team remotely. If you are looking for a new opportunity and new to remote working, please reach out to a member of the Apsida team where we can discuss any queries you may have with you. 

Resources for remote working 

We wanted to include some valuable resources that can be used by business and teams to improve remote working. We have covered communications, meetings, productivity and mental health. We hope this helps!

Communications and meetings:

• Zoom: This is particularly useful if you are still running a recruitment process and want to continue face to face interviews, it is a free and reliable tool for teams to communicate effectively.
• Slack: Popular in the start-up world, Slack is an excellent online tool for group conversations on varying topics/projects and keeps everybody communicating on one channel (especially if you are dealing with multiple e-mails and WhatsApps from your colleagues).

Productivity:

• 15Five: Currently offering free access due to Covid-19, it is a performance management suite of services that enables activity, as well as one to ones to be productive. 
• Asana: A Google Chrome add-on, this is great for personal productivity management and allows you to monitor projects and stay on the ball.

Mental Health:

• Sanctus: The wellbeing of your employees should always be taken seriously, and Sanctus provide online coaching to normalise speaking about mental health in the workplace. 
• Headspace: Although less enforceable across teams, Headspace is a well-known app for mindfulness and meditation and is a great tool to make sure to focus on your mental health.

To conclude, here at Apsida we are focusing on being positive and enabling businesses to still continue hiring exceptional talent despite Covid-19, and if you are looking for a new opportunity, please contact us directly.