The Flavourworks: a big shout-out to our Flavour Makers

Approximately 15 months ago, the management team sat in our Cheeseboard (boardroom to normal folk) and put an emergency plan in place just in case…

Just in case of what? We had no idea really! Some of us thought it was an overreaction to the media, some of us thought it was good practice in case a ‘real’ emergency came up but none of us actually thought this was for real!

How little did we realise; and yet, here we are, all these months later, a little tired and a little battle-weary, getting through it with the help of our amazing workforce.

After the first few weeks of confusion we soon settled into a routine of zoom calls and social distancing; sanitizers were never more than an arm’s reach away, along with the dreaded facemask. Yellow hazard tape became the latest decoration and posters screamed at us from every possible direction - hands, face, space! All of this went against how we normally communicate and no one has liked it but we have learnt to accept it is as a necessity (even when we had to take half of the canteen chairs away).

People were concerned; would they be furloughed (that word that we all had to google to understand what it meant), would the company survive? As a food manufacturer we quickly earned ‘key worker’ status and initially, as millions of people stockpiled, orders went through the roof - we were manic. Then, as everyone had to eat the food stored in every corner of their kitchens, orders dropped off a little. Manpower was a constant struggle as track and trace kicked in and increased absence became an issue. Eventually it all settled down and the months have gone by (albeit in a bit of a blur) and we are now hopefully starting to come out the other side.

Many of our team are EU Nationals and have been unable to go home to see family. Weddings have been postponed; company events, a big part of our social life here, have had to be cancelled. People have been frightened, stressed, worried and mental health and wellbeing has never been far off the agenda. But despite all this everyone has understood the need to get through this together and that is what we have done.

So a big shout-out to every single one of our Flavour Makers who have all gone that extra mile when needed. And to our management team who recognised the need to act quickly on that day so very long ago.

All in all it has been a hard 15 months and what have we learnt? Well, we have learnt that as a team we can cope with a world-changing virus (let’s just hope we don’t have to do it again anytime soon), but more importantly we have learnt that whilst we knew the Flavourworks is a great place to work we now know that it is a great place to work even in a pandemic.

If you are interested in joining our Production Family, email .

(The photo above was taken before COVID struck and our safety measures came into effect.)

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