Since lockdown working from home became the future for thousands of us. Companies that may never have adopted such way of working had to rethink the way they conducted their business. In the blink of an eye people's kitchen tables, couches and bedrooms suddenly became their offices as remote working allowed employers to maintain the health of their staff through a global pandemic. For employers there were essentially two key things that they needed to do the first was protecting their staff and helping them all work remotely the second was helping staff and customers access this new way of working.

For any Careers Adviser working in the Further Education Sector, they will know the importance of enrolment, and what this period means to an adviser working on the ‘front-line’. Traditionally it involves long hours, queues of students waiting desperately to see an adviser to help them with a range of issues such as; from not getting a place on college courses or to change a course or to not knowing what course to choose in the first place. This usually involves short-bursts of interviews were you as the adviser has to work quickly and effectively to find out the initial issue and to trouble shoot effectively and resolve the situation and help the student move forward in a relatively short space of time.

Since March 2020, the vast majority of career services, and providers such as schools, colleges and universities transferred all their services to providing a service remotely.

The last few months of a lockdown has enabled us to reflect on our priorities in life, what our purpose in life is and to a certain extent begin to recognise our own vulnerabilities as well as testing our mental agility and the ability to rethink and reshape how we all work. It has allowed us to reach out to each other and find some hope within the madness created by a pandemic spreading fiercely across the globe. Affecting not only our health but the way think about think about all that we took for granted and all that we once relied upon.

In recent years, I feel there has been a shift happening, a kind of evolution if you will, a transformation of the traditional role of Careers Advisers, as being expert career planners and career implementers who help match people to opportunities. This shift happening did not happen overnight but has been a response to global markets and changing in the way individuals provide and receive information, as we as advancements in technology.