Healthcare product manufacturer Direct Healthcare Solutions is one of many firms across Britain and indeed the wider world that has felt the impact of Covid-19 on its day-to-day operations. Speaking on the Leaders Council podcast, managing director James Puttick explains the importance of strong and collaborative leadership through times of crisis, while health secretary Matt Hancock has made the move of dispensing with Public Health England in favour of a new agency, amid fierce criticism of PHE’s response to the outbreak.
Leadership in Focus
Sitting down with Leaders Council interviewer, Matthew O’Neill, Direct Healthcare Solutions managing director James Puttick stressed that his daily proactive leadership style of running the business held him in good stead in not only building up his business, but guiding it through troubled waters.
Puttick said: “A leader’s role is to set out a vision and empower a team to work towards that vision. I try to have a proactive leadership style and work as a team with everyone on an equal footing, coming up with ideas and fostering a collaborative environment. I am relaxing into the leadership role more as I develop the business and both positive and negative experiences are helping me enhance the way I do things.”
The significant challenge of Covid-19 has most certainly been a steep learning curve for both Puttick and the business, but he feels that the collaborative environment within the firm and an all-important team ethic has helped it through.
“We have managed to keep operating despite suffering a significant impact. We do a lot of work in care homes, hospitals and schools and are typically around the most vulnerable or at risk patients, so we were disrupted in terms of access to these places, and then when we could get into such premises, we were heavily restricted in terms of movements, PPE requirements, and how we were able to carry out our work, but we have gotten to grips with this together.
“Fortunately, we haven’t found PPE supply to be an issue unlike some. In the areas we work in we have had PPE access as and when required and we have procured it on the open market ourselves when we have needed to, which comes back to that need to be proactive. I do not see us returning to our normal way of work for some time, we will be working under infection control measures for a period after this.”
When asked whether there were any positive lessons that Direct Healthcare Solutions could take away from its experience of navigating the Covid crisis, Puttick explained that remote working which had come about out of necessity had opened his mind up to the possibilities of shaking up the company’s working practices in future, tying into the importance of adaptability and flexibility both in business and leadership.
“There have been some positive changes, such as remote working and the flexibility it has brought, which I think we’ll continue with as much as possible. I see a combination of that and staggered shifts in the office, a sort of hybrid working system, as having a positive impact on the work-life balance of our employees.”
Indeed, Puttick feels that in the workplace of the post-Covid world under the so-called “new normal”, there will still be a place for the office environment as it was pre-pandemic.
Puttick said: “Within our organisation for certain, I feel the office will continue to have a role. We have deliveries coming in and out of the business, so we need a physical presence and therefore a building of our own. In the wider world, however, I can see working practices altering. I don’t think there will be an emphasis on the convention nine to five office working environment anymore, and people will be more accepting of working remotely. In addition, employers will be able to broaden their recruitment base this way and not simply have to hire people living in a commutable distance.
“The commercial real estate sector will be impacted by these changes, but I anticipate that the large part of businesses will still need a home of sorts due to a requirement for business premises, so that will remain but I can see it being scaled down so there will be less people working in office spaces, but that need for it will not dissipate completely.”
Leadership Today
Health secretary Matt Hancock has this week confirmed that Public Health England will be replaced by a new institute which will specialise on protecting the UK from pandemic threats in future.
The interim head of the new National Institute for Health Protection is Baroness Dido Harding, who has overseen the NHS Test and Trace operation in England.
The decision to axe PHE has come about following fierce criticism of its response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the new agency is already effective.
In August, the government introduced a new method for calculating daily Covid-19 deaths in England, after it had emerged that people who had tested positive months earlier, recovered and then died of different causes were being included as virus-related deaths in Public Health England’s statistics.
The new institute has seen PHE’s pandemic response work and the NHS Test and Trace operation effectively merged under one single leadership team, alongside the analytical capacity of the Joint Biosecurity Centre.
Explaining that the new agency would specialise in preparing the UK for future pandemics, biological weapon threats and new infectious diseases, Hancock said: "To give ourselves the best chance of beating this virus once and for all - and of spotting and being ready to respond to other health threats, now and in the future, we are creating a brand new organisation to provide a new approach to public health protection and resilience.
"My single biggest fear is a novel flu, or another major health alert, hitting us right now in the middle of this battle against coronavirus.
"Even once this crisis has passed - and it will pass - we need a disease control infrastructure that gives us the permanent, standing capacity to respond as a nation and the ability to scale up at pace."
The new agency is modelled on Germany’s Robert Koch Institute, which has played an integral part in the pandemic response there.
The move to dispense with PHE during the Covid-19 pandemic certainly has its doubters. The Royal Society for Public Health has raised its own questions about the timing of the decision while Professor Richard Tedder, visiting professor in medical virology at Imperial College London, called the decision “misplaced” and defended PHE as an "assembly of some of the wisest and most committed microbiologists and epidemiologists you could hope for”.
Professor Tedder was critical of what he called “persistent meddling from on-high” which he said would come as a “detriment” to the UK as a whole and dilute the expertise within the PHE body.
Since announcing the establishment of the new institute, Hancock has pledged to continue to scale-up coronavirus test capacity throughout the remainder of the year to reach mass population testing level and allow for further easing of lockdown restrictions.
The move follows calls for a mass-testing regime to help curb the spread of Covid-19 as schools reopen in England in September, while allowing live music and sports events to resume with greater haste.
Speaking to BBC Radio Four, Hancock said: "This is a really, really important drive that we have across government to bring in mass testing, population-wide testing.
"The mass testing, population testing, where we make it the norm that people get tested regularly, allowing us therefore to allow some of the freedoms back, is a huge project in government right now with enormous support."
Leadership in History
It was reported that the president had been placed under house arrest at his holiday home in the Crimea.
State radio announced news of the coup, saying that he was “unable to perform his presidential duty for health reasons”.
President of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin, was among thousands who took to the streets of Moscow in protest of the coup.
The new leaders, led by ex-vice-president Gennady Yanayev, declared a state of emergency. The eight perpetrators of the coup, including chieftains in the army, the KGB and the police, claimed that the power grab was to save the Soviet Union from “national catastrophe”.
However, the attempted coup culminated in failure, owed to an apparent lack of efficient planning. None of the opposition leaders faced arrest and they continued to turn public opinion against the new regime.
The instigators of the coup attempted to flee the Soviet Union in less than three days of it taking place, with Gorbachev freed from house arrest and swiftly returned to power. Seven of the eight coup plotters were eventually arrested, with one committing suicide.
Widespread dissatisfaction with the Communist system surfaced in the wake of the attempted power grab, and the Soviet Union was dissolved by the end of the year.
Photo by Gabe Pierce on Unsplash
