Bruce Parry, Summerland Credit Union, finding creating ways to maintain 1.5m social distancing

It’s been awhile since we’ve had the opportunity to post on our website, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but we thought it would be a great opportunity to hear from some of our members on how they’re coping or adapting to the position we all find ourselves in.

Bruce Parry, from Summerland Credit Union, offered the following content to update us on how he and the teams at Summerland Credit Union are using innovative and supportive methods to keep staff in-touch.

I thought this may be of interest to other businesses and happy to discuss how it works should anyone be interested.

I’m working from home full time at the moment as are lots of our head office staff. We also have very limited movement of staff between branches so maintaining social contact with others within Summerland is more difficult at the moment, yet vitally important.

Our CEO saw this as a real need & so set up a committee to facilitate more social interaction between all of our staff members.

I am one of 3 Summerland staff looking after a program to do just that. We are the Virtual Minglings Team & we’ve set up a range of activities to facilitate staff catching up with other staff, irrespective of where they are working from: a branch, head office or their home. We have general chit-chats & video catchups on our Virtual Minglings Microsoft Teams platform, sharing of memes, a Wednesday virtual morning tea with Trivia, competitions, prizes and it’s been really great. Our last competition was ‘Complete the sentence… What I’m looking forward to after this pandemic is over ….. ‘ We have a doodle art competition, match the baby photo or pet photo to the owner, innovative ways to stay 1.5m away from others and heaps more.

I’m sure lots of organisations are doing something similar. We’ve found that there is more social interaction with some staff members than before the pandemic – a very positive outcome. I wouldn’t be surprized if we continue it even after the pandemic ends.

Looking forward to catching up again soon.

Bruce Parry
Summerland Credit Union

If you’d like to update us and the the community on what challenges you’re overcoming, or how you’re helping the mental health of your staff, then please contact us at [email protected] to let us know.