Three business owners reflect on the impact of social isolation 2020.

Jesminara R, Leonore L and Ray H, Redbridge based business owners share their experiences on how the coronavirus which led to social isolation initially affected them and their businesses. This article is just a footprint in our social history in how the coronavirus effected our business community, not just financially, but emotionally as well. We hope this article helps our readers to plan for future impact of Covid19 as it is not going away until a vaccine as been created. We will need to adjust to Covid19 pandemic as our new normal with face masks, social distancing, handwashing and hand gels and carry on with our everyday lives

Jesminara Rahman – Tax Resolute Ltd

“This is a very distressing and challenging time, with people having to cope with worries about family, friends, work, and finances as well as increasing numbers of people having to enter full isolation. However, it’s vital that people stay at home,” said Dr Daisy Fancourt (UCL Behavioural Science & Healthhttps://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/mar/new-study-psychological-and-social-effects-covid-19)

It has been a challenging period for lot of business owners like myself. I have had to juggle having my children at home full time and running my business from home. I have had close family and friends pass away during the coronavirus period from cancer and the covid19 virus. My family origins are from Bangladesh so I have seen the increased impact on my community from the coronavirus especially living in East London. I look to the concept of worrying about what is your circle of control and not to stress about what you cannot control outside the circle. Even though emotions have their own life and cannot be dictated to by our mind’s logic and so I had to simply live through the emotions and let it be. 

The impact on my business has been to close my office and work remotely from home. I have furloughed my staff as they also have vulnerable people to shield at home. As a company director, I worked to minimise costs during the pandemic especially when the lockdown resulted in businesses closing temporarily and as a consequence many clients could not pay through no fault on their own. I am one of those company directors that have been left out of the coronavirus supporting schemes. I have done my best to support my clients and staff through these troubling times by providing advice, emotional support and flexibility. 

These are revolutionary times for our businesses as before it was seen as necessary to have an office, but these pandemic times has demonstrated that we can work from home. The use of Zoom, Microsoft teams and other similar programs have gone through the roof as we use online video conferencing facilities. I have always believed that remote working would be the way ahead in the future, so this pandemic has just brought forward the remote working changes. Covid 19 pandemic has changed the way I network or socialise at work in that I can reach out to people on my social media network such as LinkedIn and have a virtual coffee chat and meet people through zoom. 

Company directors have had mainly three options:

1. to minimise costs and/or shut down 
2. Think of new innovative ways to deliver their services to customers.
3. or minimise cost and use innovative ways to deliver services to customers

Social Media has played a major role in bring customers and businesses together. Muhymin Chowdhury, Sajida Foundation's head of challenge fund and fundraising, said: "Since the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis orders worth over $3.18bn (￡2.6m) have been cancelled with Bangladesh garment factories, affecting 1,150 factories and the lives of 2.27 million workers and their families." A recent study carried out here found that 47% of these workers now have no income. With so many of these workers having absolutely no income they don't have access to basic necessities.". An Edinburgh businessmen, Cally Russell in collaboration with Sajida Foundation set up https://loststock.com/products/small-box. He stated that Facebook was the biggest driver of sales.

Ray Hunwicks -Simply Create Ltd 

When lockdown was announced, along with many other businesses Simply Creates customers stopped work immediately. Now I'm in a fortunate situation that it is not my only source of income however I remember thinking ‘this is certainly going to change things’... but has it? Innovation is something that I support and that goes hand in hand with creativity. So I had always made a conscious effort to try and keep up with the latest trends and technology that is widely accessible. Along with this I have long had the vision to work from home and group a remote team. Because of this I was able to quickly adapt having already used zoom for a number of years and run and delivered online workshops. Although I was set up okay to work from home and was used to working alone from my home office, this was different, planning for the future is one thing, but I don't know of anyone who planned for a pandemic.

There were a few things that impacted my flow at the start firstly the news, watching it all the time to stay up to date with the latest information, a massive distraction to focus and a killer for productivity. Then there was social media where I spent a lot of my time researching and creating work this also became a distraction. With these distractions and the lack of people interaction I found although I was still having ideas, but I was finding it hard to grow them into something actionable. This I put down to lack of personal interaction. Although I’m a big fan of connecting online this way, but not as a means to connecting in real life... which wasn't possible. People and experiences are so key to creativity and ideas. Bouncing thought and energy off others is key and especially at the start of a project and idea.

What did I do? Well I reached out and let people know I was fine with setting up and facilitating the conversation. I made a conscious effort to actually think how much does this change, what I had planned for the year? In short it didn't, well not much at all as I was looking at implementing more digital services. What it did was made me think about helping others get set up, be better prepared and help them adapt to their current situation. I don't know what the 'new normal' will look like? I do think it has changed the landscape for traditional working methods forever. I think small businesses need to spend time on thinking and planning for the future. I need to take more time to consider the future and work on continuously trying to be and stay relevant in a quick and everchanging world. Most of all I want to get back to meeting, collaborating and working with different people and businesses over a coffee and will value that time and energy they give even more than I did before.

Leonore Lord – True Measure Ltd

For the last fourteen years, I have been used to working from home, I have converted our spare room into a fully kitted out office. I confidently motivate myself and juggle my social and professional life while I remain productive… until the self-isolation was imposed on me like most other people across the world. This new norm has at times felt like a cruel social experiment where we are all cut off from connecting face-to-face with the people we work with and those we love in our extended family. Knowing that self-isolation is good for our physical health, does not distract from the fact it may not be as good for our emotional well-being and state of mind. In my practice, I am finding that isolation, albeit in my family bubble, coupled with loneliness, can be a very unhealthy combination. I am used to a full diary and a heavy workload. Still, I am finding a higher than the average number of people failing to attend or forgetting about 121 sessions; this is coupled with clients desperately seeking more time more reassurance and more support. I have found myself at times questioning my value to others and where I might belong. Like most people, I now spend most of my time connected to a device or platform, scheduling a Zoom or Skype, which is neither healthy for my eyes nor my neck.

Living with loneliness is an absence of connection, not the lack of people; it is not possible to connect virtually in the same way as we do in person. we are living with three types of loneliness: existential loneliness, emotional loneliness, and social loneliness. Am I the only person feeling bored of being around the same people, with limited sources of entertainment? I am missing most of all feedback, verbal and nonverbal as I live in this 2D world.

Jesminara R, Leonore L and Ray H looked at five points to take away from this experience and to move forward.

1. Use the time to try new things i.e. training, new hobbies, explore new technology i.e. zoom.
2. Keep our minds active with a rich and wide variety of different interests and activities.
3. Make plans for the future i.e. a bucket list of things to do
4. Bring the outside in to bring some beauty to our lives with plants and art.
5. Use our time to plan our vision and strategy going forward for our business.