Calling out COVID – An Open Letter from Jim Hardisty

It’s been eight months since I wrote my initial ‘open letter’. A lot has changed in that time and a lot has, in many ways, remained the same.

It’s hard to put into words what the last eight months have been like for us as a business, as a team and for each of us personally.

I don’t think that any of us imagined that we would still be here, in this strange ‘groundhog day’, adapting to ‘new normals’ as the world still turns and the weather gets colder.

I have always been incredibly proud of the business that we have built; our company values, our commitment to go further whether that is with customer service, product quality and innovation or ensuring that our responsibility to the planet is at the core of what we do. But what I have learnt through lockdown and on our return to the office, is how committed we are to each other.

It seems apt to talk about this now as Mental Health Awareness Day approaches but I think that it’s important to ‘call out COVID’ and say that this has been hard.

It has been hard to adapt.

It’s been hard to fully understand what is happening and at times it has been hard to find the positives, but we have.

What we have been able to achieve, is some normality. This might not seem like a lot, but right now, it is huge.

We have been able to provide a safe working environment and some regularity to a period in time, which has been far from regular. And for a lot of us, having this routine has provided stability when we cannot predict what is going to happen next and we could not have foreseen how the Coronavirus would impact our basic day to day lives.

We don’t know how long this is going to continue for and we don’t know how the effects of the Coronavirus will influence our lives in the future, but I am proud of how we have responded and worked together to get to where we are today.

I want to take this moment to thank the Goplastic team for pulling together and continuing to work hard to drive the business forward, whilst supporting each other. We’ve always been a close team, but navigating the last eight months has made us even stronger.

I’d also like to thank our partners and customers for their part in supporting us during the pandemic; not just through their business but their encouragement and appreciation for helping keep their supply chains moving.

We will face other challenges – the Brexit transition period is one of them – but by sticking together, we are stronger.

Jim Hardisty
Managing Director
Goplasticpallets.com