“In the early days it felt intense, and people didn’t necessarily have the right technology at their fingertips when they began working from home. There was a massive focus on how we could improve communication.” – Cindy Peters, Chief Human Resources Officer at SANNE, speaks to us about being an HR leader during the COVID pandemic. As part of our commitment to supporting candidates to develop fulfilling careers, we’ve invited some HR Leaders to share their experiences during the COVID pandemic.  We recently had a great conversation with Cindy Peters at SANNE, a FTSE 250 company that employs circa 2,200 professionals worldwide. Cindy has experience across the financial services, professional services and technology sectors. She has been at SANNE since May 2019 and became Chief Human Resources Officer in August 2019.  What were the greatest challenges in managing the COVID pandemic in your organisation?  We are a global organisation and that meant different parts of our organisation experienced the pandemic at different times, with the Asia Pacific region being hit first. It was very much a learning process for the first few months. When it first affected our Shanghai office, we didn’t have any concept as to what it was going to become. It was probably in April 2020 that we realised we needed to massively ramp up communications. We got over the technology challenges quite quickly, but keeping in touch with people and keeping them engaged was something that we knew we had to focus on. We tackled it in a number of different ways: we ran a pulse survey in May 2020 that concentrated on communications – were we doing there enough or would people like to see something different? In the survey, we gave the options of requesting more one-to-one meetings, town hall meetings etc, and the executive committee (EXCO) started making videos which we put on our intranet.  These were really well received. In the early days it felt very intense, and people didn’t necessarily have the right technology at their fingertips when they began working from home. There was a massive focus on how we could improve communication within teams.  We use our intranet a lot and we run virtual coffee hangouts, where we have a panel of people with expertise in one specific area; those people who dial in to the session can then submit questions in real time to the panel. We provided support on wellbeing and managing during difficult times, and  provided access to the Headspace app for all our employees.  Our external training provider moved to a virtual platform early in the pandemic and developed programs around working from home and how to set up boundaries between work and home life,  We ran a series of vlogs with both EXCO and more junior employees talking about their personal challenges during the pandemic, talking about what they’ve learned and how they’ve adapted, to demonstrate that things can affect you regardless of seniority.  What is the long-term impact that COVID will have on your organisation? In our pulse survey, we asked people if we could change one thing when we return to the office, what would that be? Overwhelmingly, the feedback was around flexible working.  In response we’ve implemented what we call The Balance Initiative, which means something different in every country in which we operate. We’re a client facing organisation so we have to ensure we get the balance right for individual employees, for teams and for our clients. We’ve run focus groups, we’ve worked closely with country heads and teams in every jurisdiction and we’ve put in place arrangements where, post-pandemic, everyone has the opportunity to work from home for a certain number of days a week. We’re also looking at flexible start and finish times.  It’s a question of finding the best fit for everybody, while ensuring that our client service remains at a very high standard. We also have to make sure that our trainees, who are at the start of their career, spend enough time face-to-face with managers so that they’re being supported and learning from them.  Our focus on communication is something that has significantly changed. We run far more virtual coffee hangouts now and all of our town hall meetings run virtually as well as face-to-face, where covid restrictions allow.   We encourage the country heads to have one or more members of EXCO attend town hall meetings so people can ask us about whatever is on their mind. There are a number of things that have changed, but if I had to pick one, I think The Balance Initiative is going to have the biggest impact globally.   What changes have you made to your organisational structure or ops procedures in response to the pandemic? We haven’t made any changes to our organisational structure as a result of the pandemic, but being out of the office for so long meant that processes had to be really clearly defined because opportunities for more informal discussion about process were limited.   .  We had to adapt to countries going into lockdown at different times and with different circumstances, which meant we had to be able to respond quickly and proportionately.  What are the key challenges that you’re up against as an HR leader as we emerge from COVID?  Like many other industries and businesses, we’re experiencing what you might call a COVID bounce. Last year there was very little attrition; there was too much uncertainty in the markets and people wanted to stay where they were. As the situation started to ease, we have seen a lot of movement, with people changing jobs and, in some instances, careers.  We’re a growing business so attracting the right people remains a challenge. Attraction and retention are the same challenges that any growing business faces, but they have been exacerbated by COVID.  Another key challenge is to constantly remain in tune with what’s important to people. The pulse survey we did was in May 2020. Since then, the novelty of