Coronavirus and our work
Like many teams around the world, we’ve been talking about how we’re going to manage our work around the Coronavirus.
We’re acutely aware that the virus shares many things with our own work on climate change. They are, in many ways, both issues of public health, wrapped up in questions of trust in scientific expertise and how we interact with each other socially. And yet the two issues are also very different: it is vital that we don’t let the crisis stall the beautiful momentum for action on climate change we’re starting to build.
As you might imagine, we’ve had several meetings about how we want to handle it as an office, and how it will impact our work. At the moment it looks like this:
We already have a couple of team members who work remotely - we’re a national charity, and think it’s great we don’t all live in London - but we’ve extended our flexible working policy so more people can work from home more often.
We’ve started to build new systems for talking to each other as a team when most of us won’t be in the office (or none of us will be). We pride ourselves on great staff morale, and believe it’s a big part of why we’re so effective even as a small team. We can’t let the virus break that. The next few months are going to be hard, and as colleagues we need to support each other, just as we’ll be supporting friends, neighbours and family.
After much deliberation we decided not to cancel a tree-planting weekend in Shropshire we had scheduled for 14th/ 15th March. We think that in many cases, cancelling events is the right and proper thing to do, and we also know how hard it is. As this event will be outdoors with considerably less than 100 attendees, it is classified as low risk with respect to possible transmission of the virus, and we think the most responsible thing is to go ahead. We have emailed volunteers to remind them to stay at home if they have any symptoms (or have been in contact with anyone else who has), and will have handwashing facilities, encouraging people not to shake hands, etc. It’s also worth saying that one of the reasons we’re running community tree planting projects in the first place is that it is a very effective way to lift our spirits in times of climate despair; with the multiple stresses of the virus on us too, this feels more important than ever.
These plans will change as both the pandemic and scientific advice develop. One thing we’re squarely committed to is to keep on pushing for bolder, brighter, faster climate action that everyone can be involved in.
We hope all our supporters are keeping safe and well, and if anyone has any bright ideas for ways to do community climate action in a time of social distancing, we’d love to hear them. We don’t think the virus should impact our work too much, at least in the short to medium term, but we’re eager to keep everyone’s enthusiasm for climate action going through this, and keen to hear what our supporters think.