The effects of the coronavirus crisis extend far beyond those who have contracted Covid-19, with lockdown taking its toll on at-risk groups in cities, towns and villages countrywide. The past eight weeks have seen volunteers and local authorities rally together to help those in need. Efforts to help include work by the private sector, which has played its own part in helping those people who need it most.
For energy and services company Engie, the Covid-19 pandemic has seen its teams support councils and local communities in ways that move far beyond their normal duties. The company, which has 15 major local authority partnerships and
is active on regeneration projects in more than 400 communities, has deployed staff to help deliver resources, such as welfare boxes, through several of its contracts, including Qwest – its joint-venture partnership with Cheshire west and Chester council.
Qwest’s engineering team was the first to distribute these urgent boxes to residents in the area and has continued to do so, delivering non-perishable essential food items to people who are shielding from the virus. Team leader Leon Cooke and his colleagues have swapped their usual maintenance roles to help deliver the parcels, working until 10pm on the first night to make sure 69 people got the supplies they vitally needed.
“We pick up the parcels from Ellesmere Port Sports Village and then deliver them around the county,” says Cooke. With support from elsewhere, the whole team isn’t always required to help, and Cooke finds his engineers vying to get involved. “We get a real sense of achievement. We’ve got nine engineers and some days we’re only asked for two, so the lads are really fighting as to who can go out. We have work on, but everyone’s working from home at the moment – only urgent jobs are getting carried out maintenance- wise – so they’re champing at the bit to help the community. We’ve developed a ‘wheel of fortune’, so if we get a phone call saying: ‘I need two engineers to help out volunteering’, I spin and pick an engineer.”
Delivering parcels isn’t the only way the team has been involved, with staff driving to Manchester to collect donated supermarket food, including treats such as Easter eggs, for the council’s food hub, according to Qwest managing director Ben Cummins.
Cooke and a colleague also helped one resident who had recently been discharged from hospital by carrying out vital adaptations to his home. “He was in need of some grab handles in the bathroom, so we went out and fitted them,” says Cooke.
Cummins adds: “Although it’s not our normal job, Leon and his team said they’d go in and help.”
Qwest has plenty of stories of staff going the extra mile to help members of the community. In one case, a team member working in the contact centre took a call from an elderly resident with a disabled son and a husband with terminal cancer who could only eat soft food. Concerned about how long they would have to wait for the right food, the employee walked to a nearby supermarket, queued up, bought the food and dropped it off, meaning the family got it within a few hours of calling.
On another occasion, an employee received a call from a diabetic resident who was shielding and hadn’t eaten properly for days. He was struggling to control his blood sugar levels. The team member did the shopping and delivered the food to the man – and his dog. “Our staff know the right thing to do,” says Cummins. “They’re highly competent and caring individuals. They don’t do the job just for the money – they do it because they care.”
Delivering food parcels isn’t the only way Qwest has shifted its work to help the local community amid the coronavirus crisis. Staff have also collected medication for residents, delivered PPE, and distributed PCs to council staff working from home. Qwest has also introduced an AI chatbot for the council’s website, to direct concerned residents to external websites for advice, and is providing security staff at distribution centres and at hotels that are housing people who are homeless.
The roles team members have taken up may differ from their usual jobs, but volunteering isn’t anything new for staff who devote hours to helping the community on a regular basis, says Cummins. They helped to put a roof on a community centre last year and also worked on gardens at a care home. That desire to help comes from recognising that those affected could be their own family and friends. “One of our members of staff is 78. He is shielding,” he says. “The reality is we’re helping our wider community who pay our wages. Ultimately this is our family as much as it is anybody else’s. It’s about doing the right thing and recognising that we’re all in this together,” he says.
Cooke agrees, saying that while staff are aware that by volunteering to help on the frontline they may be putting themselves at risk, they have the right equipment to stay safe and ultimately want to help. “There’s a sense of pride. We have a really close team – we all look after each other. From day one everyone was volunteering and wanted to help. One of our engineers has underlying health issues, so there’s no chance of him going anywhere, but he’s concentrating on maintenance tasks. We’re really happy just to work with the community and keep everything going with regard to the parcels.”
Cummins says: “The question we’ve asked ourselves several times is, if we don’t do it, who will? There’s risk in everything you do, but it’s about balancing that risk, otherwise we’d end up with people dying at home, or having to go out and get shopping and putting themselves at far greater risk than we would be. It’s proportional, it’s managed risk.
“The one thing I’d say on behalf of Leon and the other staff, our cleaners for example, is sometimes these roles are undervalued and overlooked. I think what this has brought home is the importance of what they do, and the value that they bring every single day, even when people don’t notice it’s there. When it stops, suddenly everyone notices.”
This type of work carried out by frontline staff such as Cooke and his team has already been recognised by Cabinet Office minister Lord Agnew, who said: “The way we have seen many large organisations and their staff move from their normal day-to-day work into projects to help tackle coronavirus has been remarkable. They have been able to turn around projects very quickly, such as delivering hundreds of new ventilators to the NHS and setting up systems to deliver much-needed resources, including food parcels and PPE equipment, to those who really need it. Their work is a tribute to their organisations and a wonderful example of their commitment to working on behalf of the public.”
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