Dec 20, 2021
Often when starting a business, you’re never quite sure where it will take you. Sometimes side projects can turn out to be crucial in the future. Back in 2012, Stewart Butterfield worked on an online multiplayer game called Glitch and Slack was simply just a tool his team built to communicate with each other while working on Glitch. Fast forward to 2021 and Glitch is no more and Slack was acquired by SalesForce for $27.7 billion.
One thing that has been apparent with founding Levela has been the role our tutors have had in supporting the mental health of our students. In short, we offer 24/7 live chat so that students can speak to a tutor instantly and get help and advice on whatever issues they are facing with a particular A-level subject. It has been somewhat staggering to see how many students have been open with us to share their struggles with mental health.
Now this a very serious topic so it’s important as a founder to decide whether this is something we should be encouraging students to share with us. After all, there are services out there that specialise in supporting student mental health. After some thought on this, I realised that just by being there and listening to the concerns our students had, we were helping them to get through these difficult times.
So when students tells us that they are feeling stressed or anxious or that they had a bad day, we are there for them and we make sure that they are heard. We also point them towards helpful resources as well as reassure them on some strategies they can use to get through the hard times. In fact, listening to our students has helped to shape our entire business. So we owe it to them to be there when things get tough.
