Company culture in a remote environment

Written by: Tracie Heier (Senior Manager, Tax and Accounting at ConnectCPA)

I think we can all agree that 2020 was ‘one for the books’ -  a year that we have never experienced before - and 2021 is shaping up to be an interesting year as well. As the pandemic drags on for the tenth month (eleventh? twelfth? but who’s counting?), I think it is more important than ever to reflect on how businesses can keep company culture thriving during volatile times.  We’ve witnessed first-hand and have witnessed in our clients’ companies that it’s easy for employees to be dragged down by ‘pandemic fatigue’.  Here are a few things we did to ‘stay calm and carry on’.

COMMUNICATION 

We’re in the age of information and with every announcement from the government about the various  forms of support (and there were many), the best thing we as a company could do was communicate internally with our team.

There was so much information coming at us: from live news announcements on TV to published articles by tax professionals to posts, shares, tweets and retweets on social media.  LinkedIn and Twitter proved to be great resources for commentary by tax and finance professionals.

After each government announcement, a plan was made internally, and the same messaging was communicated out to all clients. This continued for all months of the pandemic as new programs were announced, changes were made, and programs were extended with tweaks. The pandemic wasn’t something any of our team members were prepared for but having a strong internal response to push out to clients alleviated some of the stress. 

RETREATS

As a completely remote firm, we look forward to our annual retreat each year - it’s a time where we can meet new team members in person and see old faces again. This year that clearly was not possible, but we did our best to have a virtual retreat. The things that made this retreat successful was the focus on culture, rather than the company and processes.  We invited in speakers to discuss success stories and struggles with a focus on connecting with team members.  In advance of the retreat, all team members received a swag package in the mail and were able to wear their new gear to the  ‘retreat’ to help grow the connection. What we liked at this retreat, compared to previous retreats, is the focus on culture entirely versus previous retreats where we tried to create and clean-up company processes.  There is value to the latter but after such an exhausting year, this was a really valuable change.  

LENDING A HAND 

2020 was exhausting and perhaps the longest busy season in accounting history! The tax deadlines kept getting extended, which made sense based on the impact that Covid had, but it was exhausting!  There were lots of tax changes that the team needed to be on top of, to ensure that clients were receiving proper information and there were brand new filings that we had to stay on top of to ensure that clients received government support in a timely manner.

Over time, there were team members that needed to take breaks and workloads that needed to be adjusted accordingly. The benefit of strong communication and company culture paid off in spades, as team members willingly stepped up to help cover off additional workload, administer programs and deal with clients that normally would not require extra assistance. 

Last but not least, the ConnectCPA team had a great chat with a stress/anxiety expert just this month during Bell Let’s Talk day, where he spoke about managing stress - which could prove useful this coming tax season.  The feedback from the team was great and we highly recommend it!

FINAL THOUGHTS

I think the conclusion to this story is: it is 100% possible (and required) to build a strong company culture in a remote environment. It comes from the top down and requires buy-in at all levels to make it work - and yes it does require extra effort and the right people - but it is possible. If you invest heavily in your culture, the rest of your team will fall into place as team members feel they are able to work in a safe environment, raise their hand when they need help, and innovate in challenging times.