Credit Manager Magazine 9/2021

41 CREDIT MANAGER MAGAZINE WRZESIEŃ / SEPTEMBER 2021 FECMA Challengers and champions John Donne wrote a book which appeared under the title “No Man Is An Island”, and even though this prose was first published in 1624, it is just as relevant here and now in 2021. The book makes the valid point that we are not “entire of ourselves” and that as human beings we are part of a complete community on all levels – locally, nationally and globally. Glen Bullivant FCICM, Chartered Institute of Credit Management The Covid-19 pandemic forced many chang- es upon society, both socially and commer- cially and our habits had to adjust through the lockdown months of 2020 and 2021. No pubs or restaurants, no offices or universi- ty campuses and we learned to live in what were designated as bubbles. Those of us able to work from home set up office space in our dining rooms or bedrooms, and spent hours on video calls and telephones, trying to keep the wheels of commerce turning, collecting the cash and making credit decisions. For many, this scenario was ideal, though for others something felt missing. One thing was clear from the outset, however, and that was that we all needed each other and some have argued that the isolation of home working emphasised the point more than ever before. It may be that when working in an office en- vironment, we all took this need for granted, but the detached environs of the dining room or bedroom brought it all to the fore. The credit management profession is at its very heart a people profession and even with all the modern technological innovations at our disposal, we cannot function to our max- imum potential without being part of a larger professional family. That family exists in the teams we manage in our companies and in the wider context of the world of credit man- agement. Credit managers have been making every effort through these pandemic months to keep close to their teams, encourage, sup- port and motivate, with their mental well-be- ing as important as their individual roles. It has been argued that mental well-being should now be the prime focus of any man- agement team and it is perhaps something of an irony that it took a dreadful pandemic to bring staff welfare to the forefront of manage- ment thinking. As the industrialised econo- mies begin to slowly recover from the finan- “The credit management profession is at its very heart a people profession and even with all the modern technological innovations at our disposal, we cannot function to our maximum potential without being part of a larger professional family.”