Wrangling the Wrinkles - A Discussion of Remote Work & the Importance of Staying Connected

Have you ever found yourself on the 'right side' of a trend? Unexpectedly a pandemic hits and your business model is not just modern but advanced?

Today we want to share the research and information we have gathered in our journey running a remote team. We have put significant time into building a culture and understanding the pitfalls of remote work along with the opportunities.

If you don't put the effort into identifying the wrinkles you'll find yourself falling off the bull. Wrangling the pros and cons of new business models takes deliberate attention and planning. As businesses start to consider reopening and are feeling pressure to set new policies we thought our work on the topic might help. Read more below as we share it all.

These tips and tricks will support your long-term considerations, especially if you are moving from a traditional office to a hybrid or remote workforce. These are based on our pre-COVID research and must be considered within the health and safety regulations at the time of implemenation.

What Choices Exist?

It is important to frame the conversion. There is work-from-home, hybrid, work-from-anywhere, traditional and many other models. Our research was pre-COVID and formed our decision so let's keep that in mind.

Client Experience

Amplify Advisors has a distint work model that is a bit unusual. In a non-COVID world we have differentiated by being a culturally integrated model.

English please?

Our Fractional CFOs and Controllers and our Consultants and our Contractors match the culture of the client. We have always done our work with Client Experience in mind. And most of the time, in a non-COVID world, that has been face to face. For example, if the other executives are meeting in-person, you'll find your Amplify CFO at the table with the team.

We have clients across Alberta and in other provinces. Those remote opportunities are largely virtual and always have been. But our intention is to build offices in the communities we serve. COVID hasn't changed that strategy for us. Today we are based in Calgary but to bring the Client Experience model to other centres we will be hiring Regional Leaders to lead.

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Our Accounting Services team is virtual. The Controllers and the Book-keeping accountants that serve our clients do it from their homes. Once in awhile they get asked to meet in person but the pricing is set based on a virtual model. Our Accounting Headquarters is an internal team that supports the quality and automation of all of our services. The Centre of Excellence professionals that work in AHQ do it from the comfort of their home too.

The rest of us? In a non-COVID world we try to be at the clients as much as possible. Once in awhile you find us at home grinding through head-down work. In between meetings you'll possibly catch us at a co-working desk or even a coffee shop. Ryan and Tyler float around the whole city and can be found in just about any corner!

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So while we are not remote or virutal do to our role on the executive teams of our clients and our integration into the culture of clients, Amplify's epic team does not share offices or work together on site. Hence our intense focus on researching and building a remote team.

THE Research

In our research on remote work, there are two common themes that show up nearly every time.

First is the need to use collaboration technology and build it into the operating model and culture of the business.

Teams or Slack are the most common

It’s important to feel connected through it, including operationally, but also still have that “water cooler”, unstructured collaboration and sharing & other culturally inspired uses.

This can be a change management process in and of itself and takes some discipline and time.

We are starting to see the payoff at Amplify and it really does work if you stick with it.

Here are some examples of what we have.

Watercooler - Last week it was all about you know who - Trump!
Great Reads - Here is an example of the last article shared with our epic team. The article discusses how smart people can sabatoage success.
Job Postings - Ryan lets the team know what's is bubbling in the market. This ensures that his candidate listing is the best that the whole team can come up with. Amplify has a team of 15-20+ each month and so that gives us access to a CPA network of 100s that we directly worked with.
Communications: General - This is where the magic happens. When our team needs a template or recommendation or technical answer they collaborate together and get the power of the full team. Recent examples include recommendations for equity administration software, recruiter referral for a warehouse manager, a RFP for audit template & discussion on the best commercial banking user interfaces.
What's Amplifying? - Mandatory 3 minute read of our weekly newsletter.
Business Development & Sales/Marketing - celebrate the successes, the events and other related topics
Amplify Playbook - policies and documenation of all things Amplify

The second theme that keeps coming up in all research is the need for face-to-face time.

It’s important to schedule some unstructured time, as well as team events or team meetings. If you don't actually schedule it then it never gets beyond the idea stage - the key is to get it in the calendar and then start planning.

When geographical obstacles make this expensive or impractical then video (or alternatives) should be considered. We are all experts in that with COVID right? Zoom wine nights and virtual poker and everything silly thing in between keeps people connected when the first choice of in-person can't happen.

In a non-COVID world this is not best practice.

Schedule the team an opportunity to be face-to-face. If you live in the same city do it often and with a cadence people can depend on. If you are a work-from-anywhere model or you have people in multiple cities than you won't get to do it as often but you should plan for it in the budget.

Frequency depends on budgets, practicality and culture.

The key here is the unstructured time which creates connection, deepens culture, and allows for chaos, creativity, and innovation. It can be hard to allow for that in a zoom call but there are creative alternatives if necessary.

In addition (but not unique) is the need for communication and consideration of culture.

In a non-COVID world here are examples of what we do:

Quarter Team events - brief 'townhall' is the maximum agenda when we gather together each quarter. It is a chance to socialize and it is optional. During COVID we had one virtual game night and one 'drinks' social. When the world slowly opened we followed the regulations and made a point of keeping this opportunity up. In a non-COVID world we visit clients and keep it light and a drop-in style (except the holiday party!)
COFO Day - Classic Old Fashioned Office Day is not possible in COVID but when it does it resume it reminds us CAs of the audit days. We gather in a board room or booked space. We come and go and work indendently. We chat a bit, we go for coffee, it's a 'playing house' day of what it would feel like if we had an office?
Book Club - Ever since COVID the book club has been virtual. It is a shame but necessary. Prior to the pandemic we gathered for breakfast to chat about our book. Books so far?
- Playing to Win A.G. Lafley & Roger L. Martin
- Traction Gino Wickman
- Never Eat Alone Keith Ferrazzi
- Why Simple Wins Lisa Bodell
- Why Are We Yelling? Buster Benson

Fair Enough But You are an Accounting Consulting Firm not a Remote Work Expert

It is true. We don't sell ourselves as experts in this. You should want to get the goods from the actual sources!

We've included a flood of information below in podcasts and articles if you want to learn more. These are from the true experts!

But bottom line up front? The two most important priorities to start with are

collaborative work envrionment like Teams or Slack
face-to-face opportunities and/or invest in other team connection events

Research:

Here is a great podcast called, How Science Can Fix Remote Work

If you prefer reading this article captures it too, Why Work From Home Causes Stress In More Than Just Zoom Calls — And How To Overcome It

(Both of these are by Adam Grant and he is the BEST when it comes to work life)

Another great podcast, Communicate Better with Your Global Team

Here is a quick read: How To Better Manage Your Team That Works Remotely

Here is a another worthwhile read: How to build culture in a remote team

Here is a bit of a downer article but we include for some balance: Thinking of Starting a Remote Business? Think Very Carefully.

Here is a radical guy (that we disagree with) but he has good points: Companies who Adopt Remote Work will Replace Every Company who Doesn't

What Else Makes it or Breaks it?

COMMUNICATION!!!!!!!!

Communication over multiple mediums is very important. If you are not clear in what is expected from a remote team than chances of them meeting those expectations are pretty slim.

In the Communication Made Simple course we learn that communication is an exercise in memorization. If the audience memorizes it - you know you are winning! And how do you get them to do that? You repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, .......

To get the team onboard you have to make sure they are aware of what options you are providing, they understand the importance of participating, that they commit to being connected even though they are remote and they take action that is aligned with your expectations.

You need to keep at it. This doesn't work quickly or over night. You need to set a tone at the top, participate, communicate and listen to the market (which in this case is your team!). Pivot and adjust to fit the people and you'll eventually find they get engaged.

More Ideas

Another idea that we love and will someday may allocate a budget for is an allowance that is strictly used to connect with the team. The firm we know that does this uses it to rent co-share space occasionally, pay the mileage of the Red Deer employee to come and meet them at the library, for meals together etc. The young ones even rented a house in Mexico for tax season and worked 12-16 hour days together on the beach. How awesome is that?

Employees are expected to use their budget or lose it if they don’t (and it’s considered a performance issue).

This company is 100% virtual and across Canada but their “pods” are usually within 400km of each other.

Due to COVID we did a mini version of this. #amplifylovescommunity was a fun opportunity to #supportlocal and do safe small group meet-ups. We had a contest too! Follow the hashtag on LinkedIn to keep up to date on our antics.

This is a passionate topic of ours and we try and take it pretty seriously. It’s an exercise of change management in our experience so far! It’s the biggest attraction and the biggest issue to working on our epic team. If we didn’t spend significant time on it we think it would have ruined us by now.

Connect with Us

We would love to connect with you and collaborate more or have you share your experiences on this. It’s such an important topic especially now that more people are working remotely. (And we don’t think that is a trend that is going to reverse any time soon).