Moving a medium-sized company, where several clients still prefer to work paper-based, to an entirely electronic remote working environment is no small feat - Several businesses are moving at various speeds and different levels of success.

It's coming up to a year now where I've worked for McIntyre Dick, and this lockdown period has reinforced a few things for me. Attitude, clear structure of responsibility and communication rhythm is everything.

Our successful migration to remote working would not have been able to be achieved without the excellent attitude of the agile A-team we have built. Our ethos and values lie in being the most people-focused business in New Zealand, and we started with our people. Within minutes of the announcement, we had all hands on deck, ferrying equipment place to place, with members of our team supporting those that are more technically challenged than others. We even had team members returning from holiday to band together and redeploy our team remotely. It was the most incredible display of agility and teamwork, that I'm proud to have been a part of.

Having a solid business structure meant that within all facets of the business, what needed to be done was done. We all moved to our corners and swiftly adapted our workflow and processes to compensate for our new way of working, we communicated with our clients that we're open for business with the same exceptional level of service that they have come to expect, and we allocated resources to assist our clients, fee-free through the changes the Government has made at this uncertain time.

We’ve had our meeting rhythms well established for some time now which has meant we’ve been able to retain this structure with a high level of communication and as little disruption as possible. What we’ve experienced is swift retention of efficiency and productivity, coupled with reduced business costs and arguably higher employee quality of life as we’re trusting them and encouraging our team to give priority to self-care throughout this time.

We’re happy to be safe, happy and fully operational at home as our procedures and technologies continue to evolve. But it’s important for us to keep assisting our clients through this time. One thing is for certain, our most important goal is to remain connected to each other as we continue in our new business-as-usual, and grow into a highly effective distributed team.

If you need assistance in any of these areas, or just want somebody to talk to through this time, please don't hesitate to contact us. We're in your corner.