I had the pleasure of meeting a UK team who provide services and products to SME’s across the globe…
Going through lots of internal change, our brief was to develop a 12 month all company, colleague programme.
Our insight involved meeting the SME’s, listening to calls from them, working with accounts payable to understand who pays, who doesn’t and getting an understanding of the key challenges the colleagues have to face into.
You know what I am going to say …… WOW….!! in the current climate, the level of anxiety from the SME’s was on a different level. I did some research to try and validate what I was hearing and witnessing, a quick search revealed endless research and alarming trends. Examples from the last 2 years included:
– Self-employed persons were associated with greater odds of reporting suicidal behaviours than workers with standard employment. Among the self-employed, small business owners were particularly vulnerable to suicide attempts
– 85% of SME business leaders thought that mental health would be their biggest health and safety challenge
– 3.7m small business owners are suffering from stress after Covid-19, 3.3m have been affected by anxiety and 1.8m have experienced depression
– the increased cost of hiring and staffing costs were the number one concern day-to-day, with 37% of SME owners worrying about it
I have always been a great believer in sharing what you do for your colleagues with your customers, local communities and suppliers. Indeed way back in 2011 (OK I’ve been around a loooong time), it was a goal of the Responsibility Deal.
It’s worth taking a step back as part of your change programmes, wellbeing activity, leadership training and ensuring you are up to speed on the wellbeing of customers/suppliers. If they are struggling, it’s not only the impact of your change programme you have to consider, but also the ‘day to day’ interactions your teams face into. Are they changing, are they more complex, are customers listening?
When anyone is stressed, brains go into binary thinking, it’s harder to comprehend solutions, we become emotional. This in turn can mirror on those (in all roles) who support these customers, colleagues stress and anxiety levels can increase.
Load this onto the challenges of an internal restructure, proposed job losses and you may find a need to review your planning….in this case ….post our insight, we have fundamentally changed what the client was originally considering and yes….we’re helping their SME’ customers too.
Get in touch with team@letsgethealthy.co.uk to discuss your challenges.
