Page 18 - BusinessWest August 4, 2021

“We had to reinvent our processes — how we communicated with the team and how we shared information back and forth, especially when working remotely,” said Lapier of those early days, noting that a three-month extension of the tradi- tional April 15 filing deadline helped spread the work out and was a saving grace.
Bova agreed, noting that his firm of nine
“Accounting has for many years been an historical-look-back
kind of thing. With the speed that people can now get data, they don’t need us to tell them about what happened six months ago; they need us to tell them what’s going to happen six months from now and help them interpret that.”
employees adjusted to the new landscape out
of necessity, with investments in technology, a move to a paperless work process, Zoom meet- ings between employees and with clients, visits by appointment only, and other steps.
Moving forward, many of these new ways of doing things will continue, with perhaps the big- gest being where people work. Indeed, most of
the firms we spoke with said some variation of hybrid schedules will become
the norm for at least some employees (see related story on page 25).
“In the future, there will be more hybrid work mod- els, where people work in the office, but they do some workathome—Icansee some real potential for that,” said Bova, adding that not all workers have returned to the office, and he’s not sure when they will. “We’re going to explore our options with this; there’s no need to deal with it in the summer — it will be more of a fall issue.”
Cheney agreed. “We’ve
been really flexible as a busi-
ness with not requiring peo-
ple to come back just yet,”
he said, adding that most at
the company have returned
to their offices in the PeoplesBank building, but some are still working remotely. “The likelihood is that some kind of hybrid work schedule will be the future for our business.”
Whittlesey recently adopted a hybrid work pol- icy, one that enables people to work “from wher- ever they will be most efficient,” said Nadeau, adding that most are finding it more efficient to work remotely, and they will continue to do so in the future.
“Some people are not coming in at all, and
Howard Cheney says the pandemic may have accelerated, or amplified, a shift within accounting to an advisory role, with more emphasis on the future than the past.
some are coming in a day or two a week,” he explained. “It’s ‘work where you need to for that day.’ Some employees have actually moved away to another state during COVID, so you could definitely call them ‘remote.’ And it’s been pretty
Accounting
Continued on page 44
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