Lessons from COVID-19

Soon it will be almost one third of a year since we have been working in our offices. Imagine! The more intriguing issue is that we don’t know how much longer this will last. In our company mind, we do not see endangering anyone for the sake of “business” and therefore we do not foresee going back to the office before September. At that time depending on the “wave” status, we will make a decision about our return.

What have we learned?

1. It’s not a perfect world. As much as “working from home” maybe enshrined as the wave of the future, it is still lacking in many ways. While there are obvious short term benefits of working from home – the greatest being the fact that it makes work possible – the jury is still out on the long-term effects. Our experience of life is that to varying degrees we are essentially social beings. Working in isolation (in-spite of any means of digital communication) is at best a band-aid solution to a very difficult problem.
2. We can do it. We are resourceful people. We can and do make the best of a situation that is not perfect. Our staff meets every morning on Microsoft Teams and we have lunch together every second Week. We even have virtual lunch together…everyone orders pizza and we celebrate our being a staff.
3. We work exceptionally well together under the circumstances. The work gets done just as quickly as before – which is quite a surprise.
4. People are very generous in an adverse situation. Our staff is totally committed to our clients.  I know that on Tuesday evening a couple of staff members of our staff were still working at 8 pm to take care of some urgent needs of clients.  I did not hear any complaints.
5. Because our staff works diligently, honestly and very hard, we have found ourselves in the position of not being able to or needing to request Government money. It takes a lot of hard work, but we have been doing it.

Ultimately the lessons are day to day.  We learn so much about each other, about our clients and about business in general during these trying days. It’s not negative….it’s positive and no matter what the future holds, we know that together we will be prepared to handle it.