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“Cloud Cover IT is committed to eliminating discrimination and encouraging diversity within our workplace. Our aim is that the workforce will be truly representative of all sections of society and each person feels respected and able to give their best.”

I wanted to get this in early, these are the opening words of our company’s Equality and Diversity policy which goes on to set out our commitments and the responsibilities of the directors in ensuring that it happens. I agree with its commitment and with its objective.

Part One: Are we “Truly Representative”?

… I look around our team and, what I see is not “truly representative” of the diversity of the communities that I live and work within.

A little over 10% of our team are female, almost everyone is White European with a Canadian thrown into the mix. Me? I’m a white, 50something CIS male (who had to google CIS male). I have pronouns displayed on my LinkedIn profile and, in my quieter moments, despair not only that we still have an inclusivity problem but, that I am a part of that problem.

It’s a wider Society Problem.

It’s a Business Problem.

It’s a Tech Sector Problem.

It’s our Companies Problem.

It is My Problem.

Part Two: “Are we doing anything for Pride?”

This innocuous Teams Message popped up from a colleague about three weeks ago. I reply, “Of course, we can do one of those nice rainbow logo thingies, that will look great.”

I start to question this; What if we get criticised? We aren’t really bandwagon kind of people. I really don’t like how some other companies “Do Pride”.

It’s not going to turn into a single extra enquiry, contract or invoice.

Just leave it? Yeah, that’s the easiest thing to do.

Despite these entirely rational arguments, the question stays with me and, I discuss it with colleagues, family, and some LGBTQ+ rights activists who I know.

Part Three: “Not everyone feels included in our Inclusive world.”

My conversation with a Trans activist stayed with me. “Not everyone feels safe to be who they are.”

I lean back on my trusty Equality and Diversity policy…. “There you go, you’re safe here, everyone is.”

“Prove it,” they say…

I look around our team and, what I see is not “truly representative” of the diversity of the communities that I live and work within.

A little over 10% of our team are female

Almost everyone is White European; I hear the Canadian from across the office; phew!

Let’s start to address this problem, we know that diversity is an advantage, diverse teams work better, solve problems faster and, frankly, have more fun doing it.

It’s a Society Opportunity.

It’s a Business Opportunity.

It’s a Tech Sector Opportunity.

It’s our Company’s Opportunity.

It is My Challenge.

Part Four: Yes, we are doing something. Not for Pride but for our future.

We’ve done one of those coloured logo thingies…

Using the colours of the inclusivity flag designed by Daniel Quasar in 2018, we hope that this is a visual representation not only of our commitment to strive for inclusivity in our team, our work, and our ethos but that it represents our celebration of and our positivity towards diversity.

During June this year, we will review and change how we communicate, how we recruit, how we reach out and, importantly how we act. When our outward-facing logo goes back to brand colours, we will have made lasting changes to how we include others.

I don’t yet know what those changes will be but, I know we will be better and stronger for them.

If you read this and feel that changing our logo colours for a few weeks a year and writing an inclusivity blog is appropriating for gain, I hear you and I wrestle with your criticism honestly.

If you see a sincere effort to play a small part in a big challenge, thank you and, if you have a part to play, join us.

I want to hear from you whatever opinion you hold on this, your input will shape what we do next.

———————————————-

Cloud Cover IT is a Glasgow Based IT company, 10 years old, 40 staff and generally, I think, a great place to work. 

Steven Turner is Commercial Director at Cloud Cover IT.

Thank you to everyone who continues to contribute to this and helps me to form my opinions.  Never stop.

The post Our Inclusivity Challenge appeared first on Flyte.

Hybrid working has become the norm for many in the past 18 months, with the added flexibility and reduction in commuting time providing a better balance through the working week. The Cloud Cover IT team are no different, with many moving to a hybrid work pattern. However, John decided to take hybrid working a step further- upping sticks from Glasgow and settling in the North of Skye. He’s now 5 months in, has acquired some four-legged friends and is loving it. Here’s his 5 month update.

According to Google Maps, I now live 239.9 miles from the Cloud Cover IT office in Glasgow.  If I decided to leave the car and walk to work, they reckon it would take me 69 hours.  If I were to join the company “Cycle to Work Scheme” it would apparently take me 18 hours and 52 minutes- not taking in to account the 20 years since I’ve been on a bike.

Anyway, I think it’s fair to say that’s pretty far.

I’m also far from most things now.  The nearest shop is 6 miles away.  The nearest pub 8 miles.  And the nearest pub worth going to around 25 miles.

I’ve been a “city boy” all my life, from Glasgow to London to Oxford and back to Glasgow. I had never imagined myself breaking up fighting chickens or nursing sick animals back to full health. That was never anywhere in my plan.

And yet, here I am. 5 months in and loving it.

There have been some flaky Teams calls, but we’ve all had those right?  The Internet connection here is (considering I’m essentially in the middle of a field) pretty good. 

I have had a laptop die on me which would usually be considered a complete disaster, though upon realising that I’m finally practicing what I preach- keeping all my files in OneDrive and SharePoint; making sure my DevOps was up to date; and any Power Apps stuff is in the Power Apps Studio- it ended up being a relatively painless hurdle. Luckily, I had another laptop that I could use until my dead one was sorted, but had I needed one shipped it would have arrived the next day. 

And so essentially all I lost was my Football Manager save.  Don’t get me wrong, I’d only spent 6 years as Hellas Verona Manager and guided them to the Serie A title and Champions League final 2 years in a row, so it was a hard one to take.  But at least in real life, I genuinely lost nothing.

I’ve been around long enough to have accumulated boxes of external hard drives with backups of everything, and the gut wrench when one is dropped somewhere and everything stops working is a feeling you don’t forget easily.

I’m still pretty astounded at how, without really thinking about it, I’ve switched from having everything saved on my machine to automatically having it in OneDrive. Anything that has had to be shared with the rest of the team, hundreds or thousands of miles away, has found it’s place in the relevant Teams Channel or SharePoint site without any real effort on my part.

I know a lot of people have a reluctance towards new technology.  But I genuinely don’t think that there has to be any fear.  There maybe has to be a little change in mentality, but once you start it all just happens without having to think about it. For me it is as seamless as it’s possible to be, whether it’s having the OneDrive client on your machine or syncing Document Libraries in SharePoint for easier access.

Being out of the city and so far from everything definitely has its challenges, I’m not going to deny that.  If you forget that pint of milk at the shop, you can’t just wander down and get it and if it’s a Sunday you’ll be having black coffee.  But in terms of keeping in touch with the Team at work, and being able to keep in touch with family, I’ve said it before, Microsoft have absolutely smashed it.

And while M365 wasn’t able to save my Football Manager career, I certainly wouldn’t have been able to make the move somewhere so remote without it.

If you fancy making a big relocation like John but just don’t know where to start when it comes to IT, or you would just like to improve your system productivity and make your data more accessible and secure, get in touch with the team!

The post Remote Working- 5 months in appeared first on Flyte.

Cloud Cover IT has delivered a comprehensive IT, telecommunications and security system upgrade for spa and beauty treatment specialists Pure Spa, in support of their recent rapid expansion. 

The successful project has improved operational efficiency and established a consolidated, uniform IT system across Pure Spa’s 15 existing sites.  

This partnership between Cloud Cover and PURE coincides with the opening of Pure Spa’s new PURE Beauty Zone shop, situated centrally on Rose Street in Edinburgh, as well as the relocation of PURE’S head office to the same address. PURE is the UK’s leading spa and beauty operator with spas in London, Bristol, Manchester, Peterborough, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen. Pure Spa & Beauty make high quality spa and beauty accessible to everyone in urban areas with spas located in shopping centres, city centres, Hotels, Leisure Clubs and High Streets. 

“Foundation for growth”

The initial connection between Cloud Cover and Pure Spa was made at a meeting of the Scottish Business Network in London earlier this year. 

“A brief chat with the team at Pure Spa revealed they were in a period of accelerated growth and looking for a review and upgrade of their IT systems and processes,” said Lance Gauld, Director, Cloud Cover IT. “We recognised PURE needed a streamlined IT and telecommunications solution which could provide a stable and economical foundation for their existing business and continued growth. With such a geographically diverse business and a need for systems reliability and speed to support PURE’s high standards of client service, Cloud Cover understood and quickly implemented a new IT&T support regime across the PURE estate.” 

After surveying all Pure Spa sites, a package of measures was implemented to modernise the organisation’s IT and cyber security systems. “We introduced a standardised system across all locations to improve the user experience for staff members,” commented Lance. “This significantly reduced infrastructure costs and enhanced not only technical support but protection against attacks too. Response time to issues was dramatically reduced, along with business downtime. We were able to implement all of this with very little disruption to, or effort from, Pure Spa themselves.” 

Michael Lumsden, Executive Director at Pure Spa, said: “It is an exciting time for Pure Spa, as we have opened seven new locations this year alone. With plans to add further sites over the next few years, we needed to build on our existing IT systems to accommodate all recent and future expansion. With the fantastic services that Cloud Cover have introduced, we feel we can now achieve these goals.” 

Already, Pure Spa has noticed a “big difference” in their technical operations, which has benefited every level of the business. 

“Our teams are certainly benefitting from having streamlined systems and support in place and aligned at all locations,” said Michael. “Having a single point of contact for the bulk of our IT&T infrastructure makes it easy to address and resolve any issues, allowing our teams to focus on the needs of our clients, rather than navigating multiple help lines for support. Any problems can now be quickly and easily resolved at a central location to ensure the smooth running of the business.” 

For more information on Cloud Cover IT, please contact Holly Watson (holly@cloudcoverit.co.uk) or call 0141 280 2882.

For more information on Pure Spa, please contact Lesley Ross: lesley@purespauk.com.

The post How we helped: Pure Spa appeared first on Flyte.