Busy Bees nurseries welcomed colleagues back to its National Support Centre, on Shaftsbury Drive, with a special socially-distanced ceremony. The first time it has re-opened since the lockdown began.

Busy Bees is now approaching a more flexible way of working. The staff, who have been successfully working from home will now have the option to balance work between an office environment and working remotely.

On the day of re-opening, Busy Bees invited colleagues in sessions through the day and offered their teams a tour of the modified office and unveiled robust safety measures, matching those already in place in nurseries across the country. This approach has been designed to support colleagues and ensure everyone is confident in the measures that have been implemented, and understand their role in keeping themselves and their colleagues safe.

To ensure health and safety, employees will have their temperature checked via an automatic temperature reader when they come to work. There are also sanitiser stations throughout the building, with limited numbers of people allowed in the facilities at any one time.

Both Marg Randles OBE, Busy Bees’ founder and Simon Irons, global chief executive were in attendance and thanked the team for their support and commitment over the last few months.

Simon Irons, group chief executive at Busy Bees, who cut the ribbon at the re-opening, said:

‘The past few months have shown just how resilient our teams can be, collaborating and making remote working a success, in the face of the most challenging circumstances.

‘There are clear benefits to working from home, but we also recognise this may not suit everyone – some of our employees live on their own, don’t have a suitable space to work, or simply miss interacting with their team in person rather than behind a screen. There’s nothing more important to us than the health and wellbeing of our people, so for that very reason we’re embracing the agile workspace and giving our colleagues choice and flexibility.

‘Being able to see our colleagues in person after so long, albeit with social distancing guidelines in mind, was truly special. I’d like to thank everyone who contributed to making our National Support Centre a safe place to work and who put together a wonderful reopening event to mark the occasion.’

Parents and children at Busy Bees can also benefit from the nursery’s innovative app, ‘UP’, which stands for Unleashing Potential.