Last week Herongrange Group suffered devastating staff shortages unlike any we have had to face before. This incapacity to deploy personnel massively impacted our ability to operate efficiently and as normal. I therefore felt it prudent to address this issue and detail the reasons behind it, both for the benefit of our colleagues and our customer base.
- In the UK, nearly 700,000 people were pinged by track and trace in the past week and subsequently told to self-isolate for 10 days, the highest figure recorded since the app launched in September last year.
- This ‘Pingdemic’ resulted in us losing 12% of our workforce.
- In addition to this, nine key members of our office and field-based staff were isolating due to contracting Covid-19 – including myself and the entirety of the Midlands based Operations Management team. However, those staff who remained at work pulled out all the stops to put contingency plans in place to mitigate the effect of those isolating.
- Unfortunately, this is not an incident limited to our sector, and industries across the country have suffered greatly as a result. Many businesses are now calling for the government to bring forward the date that has been set to make fully vaccinated adults exempt from these self-isolation rules, which is due to come into force on the 16th August.
It has been particularly difficult to deal with these issues from afar, as I too am isolating with the virus. As CEO, I would like to offer my sincere thanks to everyone who soldiered through these difficulties, and those who worked their hardest to firefight and limit damage. It was greatly appreciated. To all our customers, my deepest apologies if you were affected, and I hope that we will never again have to face such a detrimental situation moving forward.
Many thanks for your understanding and continued support.
Steve Withers
CEO – Herongrange Group
