Tommy Doherty, a partner at\u00a0Mazars international audit, tax, and advisory firm in Dublin says that one of the first things he missed when working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic was the journey to and from the office. His 45-minute drive from Greystones in Co Wicklow into Dublin city centre allowed him to prepare for his working day in the morning and unwind from it on his way home.<\/p>\n
Much of his working day from his home office (formerly his children\u2019s playroom) has been spent on back-to-back\u00a0Microsoft\u00a0Teams meetings or Zoom calls.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter the first lockdown, I needed to get back into the office for a while. I remember being on a call when my children were playing outside and being on the point of shouting out the window at them,\u201d he explains. However, all in all, he found it easy to concentrate especially during the audit season from November to March when he is at his busiest. \u201cThe children were very good and didn\u2019t come into the room when I was working,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Comparing how his work changed, he says, \u201cusually, I\u2019m interacting with about 65 people in the office and then crisscrossing Ireland to go to client sites but all of that interaction had to move to Zoom and Teams calls \u2013 often without any gap between calls.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was very little time to digest what happened in each meeting as you previously would when have when driving somewhere else or walking from one meeting to another.\u201d<\/p>\n
Doherty explains how the pandemic also resulted in extra work for managers, both through dealing with the financial uncertainly it created for Mazars\u2019 clients and facilitating how all the usual office processes could move safely online.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had to ensure that our teams were equipped to think about all these matters as they worked through an audit,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n
Doherty feels strongly that while technology allowed work to continue during the pandemic, face-to-face contact between employees and clients is far superior, takes less time, and allows for more valuable interactions.<\/p>\n
However, his company did make some effort to create informal connections between staff during remote working by setting up virtual coffee breaks on Friday mornings.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe audit department was split in half so we would chat to any one of about 40 people as if we were randomly meeting them in the kitchen. We also set up ways for peer groups to meet together and allocated managers to meet with new graduates who had never been into the office,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Looking ahead, Doherty says. \u201cThere will probably be a new way to work together after this. What\u2019s most important for me is to get out and see clients again. It won\u2019t be five days in the office or five days at home. It will be what matches best with what the client needs from the service we provide to them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Future of Work case study: Tommy Doherty, partner at Mazars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":4102,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-future-of-work-2021","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n