Remote Work Tactics Your Firm Needs Today, Next Week, and In a Month
Today’s guest is Liam McIvor Martin. Liam has been leading the charge on remote working for the past decade by bringing together the top experts in the field on remote work through Running Remote conferences. He is the co-organizer behind Running Remote and co-founder behind Staff.com and Timing Doctor.
With nationwide stay-at-home orders in effect, accounting firms, small to medium-size between 50 to 100 employees, are expected to make challenging decisions and quickly change their perspectives overnight. One perspective change involves transitioning to remote work and adjusting processes as employees work from home. Not only do firms have to manage their teams remotely, but they have to strategically manage and maintain their client relationships.
Summary
- Remote Work Set-Up: What to Do Today
- Remote Work Set-Up: What to Do Next Week
- Remote Work Set-Up: What to Do In a Month
- Honing In on Your Communication Practices
Resources
Related Content
- How to Survive as a CPA During the COVID-19 Era
- How to Operate a 70+ Employee Accounting Firm
- How to Streamline Your Business to Run Without You
Remote Work Set-Up: What to Do Today
Like a lot of us have recently, Liam has had to adapt and postpone his strategies and content, including Running Remote, the largest conference on remote work in the industry. He is also running a donation-only event called Remote Aid, which is a fully virtual adaptation of the conference. Just as Liam has adjusted the format to reach his audience, there are practical things you can do today to keep your clients engaged and your business growing.
Start by focusing on what tools your team will need to go remote. From a financial perspective, figure out what you can eliminate right now so you can be sustainable. This means you will need to make cuts now to project sustainability well into the future.
Keep in mind that we are likely to be in this situation where unessential businesses have to be closed for several months. This can be anywhere between 1-18 months, though it is possible that a vaccine or treatments will become available within the next six months. Over the long haul, what can you cut? Some immediate places to look include office space leases.
After you have made cuts in areas requiring a physical presence, it’s time to find tools that will help boost methods of communication and enhance project management. Liam offered several recommendations, including Slack or Twist for internal communication. One benefit of Slack is that it integrates well with different parts of other apps.
Zoom is also a good paid option, as it offers screen shares and meetings with up to 1000 people. For those who are looking for free, no-pay options, consider using Skype. For time-tracking, Liam recommends Time Doctor. For project management, he mentions Trello and BaseCamp, but we are all in agreement that Jetpack Workflow is definitely the way to go.
Important for the company’s long term functioning is creating process documentations and seriously focusing on communication.
Get everything you need to manage projects and meet deadlines.
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, and get 32 free accounting workflow templates today!
sign me up!
Share this article
