For professional adviser use only

Tales From The Frontline – Surely Not!

In this special edition of Tales From The Frontline, Sandringham Paraplanner Jessica Brundle gives us a staff eye view of the lockdown and comes to a realisation about her kids.

Exactly two months ago, as lockdown loomed I gathered the Paraplanners and crammed in 1:1s before it would be too late, using the time to set expectations for the standard of service we should collectively provide to Sandringham Partners whilst working from the comfort of our own homes. Comfort is a feeling I have since found out was entirely the wrong expectation! 

‘How on earth am I going to run the department without face to face meetings and reduced contact with the team’, I thought to myself as I drove to pick up my two wonderful children on what would be their last day of school for what could potentially be months. My thought process soon turned to ‘children at home, for months, surely not!’ Turns out they are really not that wonderful either.

On 27th March, looking at the Sandringham Powered Advice calendar we had just 3 slots booked into April’s calendar. We normally go into the following month with at least 2 weeks fully booked. All the hard work, persistence, passion, processes carefully thought out and implemented and ample Partner contact to take the department from strength to strength couldn’t have gone to waste, could it? I genuinely care about the department succeeding and the service for Partners. Had our regular users of SPA really stopped writing business? Surely not!

With a dog jumping up at me I sat down to contact 100% of previous SPA users, whilst my not so wonderful children insisted standing behind me to make pancakes EVERYTIME I was due to make a video call. It immediately became apparent it was clear that SPA support was needed now more than ever. So the caseloads were allocated and Partners reassured, the Paraplanners busy, projects underway and contact maintained via email, phone and all the other online tools I usually avoid (like the plague funnily enough).

Now time to focus on schoolwork. Doing the job I do the obvious lesson to begin with would be maths but it soon became apparent I’m no good at algebra so instead I’ll let the kids become pros at Fortnite, maybe they will create a game when they’re older and become millionaires I keep telling myself.

It was now time to reopen the Launderette because I needed to speak to a Sandringham prospect on yet another Zoom video call, ‘I really should get changed for this one, and it’s also unacceptable to keep the kids in the same pajamas for 2 days??’ I thought to myself.

Whilst running the school, house, kennel, getting the Launderette back in business, not forgetting making 63 meals a day Paraplanning has collectively returned 123 Partner cases and completed 151 SPA slots so far during the pandemic.

Thank heavens the Government made the early lockdown decision to grant Off-licences and other alcohol retailers “essential business” status!

Jess

Jessica Brundle, Paraplanner

Related Blogs

View all Blogs

Tim Sargisson: Taking a flexible route back to the office

While cutting the commute is a massive remote working bonus, in practice the home office comes with its own set of challenges, writes Tim Sargisson. Here he outlines why a mix of home desk and real-life office gives employees the best of both worlds After nearly six months Sandringham took its first significant step forward […]

Read more

Tales from the Frontline – the view from lockdown

When news reports of a new flu-like virus first started coming through at the start of the year I, in combination with the majority, if not all, of the population, had no idea of how drastically life was going to change over the coming months.  So here we are, some six-plus months later, emerging from […]

Read more

Tales From The Frontline – Frontline communication

Another ‘Tales From The Frontline’, this week Sheffield based Martin Parry talks about the challenges he’s faced working with his predominately NHS staff client base. In any relationship, good communication is key, and during a pandemic, how much more so! Our front line as Sandringham advisers, cannot be compared to the heroic efforts of NHS […]

Read more
TOMD SERVER