Over the years I’ve discovered that business leaders spend a lot of their time thinking about how to get the best out of their staff, but ignoring the fact that mentoring and coaching doesn’t begin and end with those at the coalface of the business.

Yes, all businesses do need to prioritise employee development because a more engaged, better skilled and an increasingly motivated workforce is ultimately good for growth and profitability – doing things quicker, more efficiently and with greater expertise almost always translates into a healthier bottom line.

Over the last couple of months the world has had a much more familiar look to it.

Mask wearing is now a matter of personal choice in most places, the roads, trains and buses are busy again and there is a sense of business as usual around commerce and industry.

Good businesses that are genuinely serious about improving productivity and profitability understand that both things are generally only possible through a culture that values positive staff engagement.

The problem is that this isn’t always something that’s immediately tangible or even measurable.

It’s hard to believe that we’re on the threshold of the final sprint to the end of the year. In three weeks or so, children will be off to university or back to school and we’ll be heading into the autumn.

So, a month after the UK relaxed its social distancing measures and we all began to get on with the business of getting on with business, what should be on the agendas of HR teams between now and the end of the year?

So here we are, finally, opening the country up again after a third period of lockdown and social distancing restrictions.

It’s not been the euphoric rush to freedom we might have expected or hoped for. The arrival of the Covid Delta variant and a worrying uptick in hospital cases have made our exit out of lockdown tentative rather than the mask-throwing jamboree we may have envisaged.