As April is stress awareness month we wanted to take this opportunity to share with you what we do at Charity Horizons to help eradicate unnecessary stress, and manage inevitable stress… *Exercise* We have made a commitment to each other that every day we schedule exercise as if it were a meeting DURING the working day. So we either walk, run, cycle, work-out, do yoga / pilates every single day!

My journey to the other side finished a couple of weeks ago. By this, I mean working in house for a charity. The charity I had the pleasure to work for was Family Fund and I am so grateful for the experience. The good thing is, it isn’t goodbye, as both myself and Charlie will be continuing to work with the charity in a consultancy capacity. I just though I would take a few minutes to share my experience. I initially began with the charity in November last year on a 3 months contract and was delighted to stay for has (unbelievably) now been 11 months! As part of my own personal development I knew I always wanted the opportunity to work for a charity, having spent many years (17 in fact) working with numerous charities supporting with recruitment, but never directly on the other side. I couldn’t be more grateful that the organisation I got to do this with, was Family Fund. I can honestly say I have enjoyed every second. In my contract I felt I was able to make a huge impact but also learnt so much along the way. The experience was invaluable, and I will certainly look back on my time there with extremely fond memories. I am not going to lie in that it has certainly been a crazy, busy few months with not just considerable volumes of recruitment, but a few curve balls thrown in the mix too – one of which came in the shape of a global pandemic! This huge curve ball meant we had to totally change the way we recruited, but more importantly it had a significant impact on the charity as a whole and the families we supported. I was both proud and amazed, in equal measures, with how as an organisation we all adapted to the ‘new norm’. At first recruitment was put on hold, and I had the opportunity to work on some really interesting projects including the buddy project and wellbeing guidance. The recruitment freeze didn’t last for long, and after a couple of weeks we were ready to go again. As a team, we tackled the immeasurable challenge of changing the whole recruitment and onboarding process to make it entirely virtual and online. I think, on my last count, I have carried out over 100 virtual interviews in the last few months. I have to say I have also been super impressed with how all the line managers adapted to this, naturally there were some nerves around this new way of working but everyone took this in their stride and as a result we have been successful in recruiting countless amazing key staff members via our new virtual methods. Adapting quickly to this virtual world certainly hasn’t been without its personal challenges! For me, this has involved my lively and rather entertaining 5 year old making rather dramatic entrances to team meetings and having to conduct interviews by candlelight during impromptu power cuts! I'm sure the local postman is placing bets with his friends on how often he can interrupt proceedings by appearing at precisely the wrong moment! 

I got sent a meme a few weeks ago with the caption ‘Coronacoaster – One day you’re loving your bubble, doing workouts and baking sourdough, the next your’re crying, drinking wine for breakfast and missing people you don’t even like’ and it is one of the many (!) I’ve been sent, but one of the few that has really stuck with me. Not, I hasten to add, because I have actually gone as far as to drink wine for breakfast (or in fact at any inappropriate hour!) but because the sentiment was so apt.