What an incredible week! After a couple of years working in recruitment, I came across a great opportunity and a week ago I started working with Gravitate HR as an HR assistant.

I was excited by the prospect of a fresh beginning but also inundated with a sea of worries before my first day. I was not only starting a new role and a new career, but I was going to start it remotely! How was I going to learn the intricacies of the role from my living room? How was I going to fit in with the team if I had never met them in person? How was I going to be supported and trained?

It took about a day for my concerns to dissipate. I realized that it only takes a team who wants to make it work for it to work. My induction went as smooth as it would have gone if I had been in the physical office, with the added benefit of wearing cozy slippers!

I could not have wished for a more supportive team of managers and colleagues. Everyone made themselves available for me and even the Managing Director set time aside for a one-to-one with me. The energy of the team is so positive and infectious that I haven’t missed the usual office coffee breaks in the kitchen at all. This first week has changed my mind about how efficient and tight-knit a team can be while working remotely and how easy it is to overcome the challenges that one could expect before starting a new role from home.

I was expecting that my brain would be overflowing by now with new information about clients, processes, rules and systems. However, a carefully planned induction made my training easy to digest and I’ve had the opportunity to start contributing to my team’s goals already. I have learnt a great deal from a range of tasks that I have participated in and I am committed to taking advantage of the immense expertise of my colleagues. Also, Gravitate’s clients are as diverse as they come when it comes to their industry, size, location and the HR challenges they face, which I have found to be the best environment for my skills development.

I feel really excited about my HR journey ahead with Gravitate. Now that I’ve reached the first week milestone in the company, I have set a development plan for myself and I’m thrilled to start working on those goals from Monday. After all, I feel there’s nothing I can’t do when I’m wearing such cozy slippers.