As we move into what is expected to be a two-week period in Level 3, we wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone for your incredible patience and support as we all found new ways of working together during Alert Level 4.
KGA Senior Accountant, Alison Enticott, writes, “I would just want to thank my clients for working with me and being responsive in finding solutions for providing info, so that things kept getting done at our end.
With Level 4 being announced a mere week before Year End, one of our busiest times in the year, we managed to quickly put in place systems for receiving client papers and putting them into quarantine for the required number of days. There is no under-stating this experience for us all which has been “gritty and exhausting”, to say the least!
While some have enjoyed working from home, discovering the time gained through not having to commute to work and fewer disruptions from general office conversations, others in our team have had increased challenges with juggling childcare, schooling, caring for older parents and getting to grips with a new way of working – remotely.
As Alison says, “It’s quite gritty more than anything, and the first two weeks were exhausting to be sure.”
However, there have definitely been some silver linings to our new way of working here at KGA. None more so than the increased client contact as Alison discovered very early on during her time in lockdown.
“The client contact has been massive, and I have really enjoyed this. We’ve shared some stories and our experiences, and generally helped where we could.”
Our expectation as we move into Level 3 will be more of the same. The good news is that we have good systems in place and everyone is working remotely very successfully so there won’t be any sudden changes for any of us to deal with. We will just continue to hunker down and support each other to the best of our abilities – albeit with access to takeaways now!
Thanks again for your patience and support through this time. Let’s keep helping each other to stay safe and stay at home.
Our Chief Executive, Jacqueline Ironside, agrees that as a modern, cloud-based accounting firm, the move to working from home has actually be relatively easy for our team. In quite short notice, we were able to pack up our our computers, monitors, calculators and office chairs, and were all operational remotely within half a day. Our phone system is also cloud based so we can answer calls anywhere in the world, so long as we have access to the internet.
Jacqueline explains further, “We have managed to be in contact with our clients via telephone and video meetings, which has been great. Over the first two weeks, we endeavoured to contact all our clients to offer assistance with their COVID19 wages subsidy and many of them now have received this thankfully.”
Jacqueline also ran her first ever live webinar, “It was a bit of a challenge initially but after it was done I thought, what a great way to get the message across to a large number of people at once. I think we will be doing this more in the future.”
With three adults in her bubble, working from home has had its challenges for Jacqueline. Everyone now has to work in a different room so they don’t annoy each other with talking loudly during Zoom meetings or on phone calls.
“I’ve especially enjoyed our regular team catch-ups using Zoom, and on Fridays we get together at 4pm (virtually) for a glass of wine and a chat.”
Any further announcements regarding possible changes to our services or systems will be posted on our website, Facebook page and LinkedIn page.