5/3/2020 What COVID-19 Has Revealed About Working Remotely - CFO

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Workforce Management
April 30, 2020

What COVID-19 Has Revealed

About Working Remotely
Use these three insights to improve remote work in the wake of the
pandemic.

Jon Raphael, Deloitte & Touche

Large organizations around the world have pivoted to remote work amid the COVID-19
pandemic. And to a remarkable extent, many have continued to carry out much of their
business operations. Especially compared to the macro-environment in which some industries
and smaller businesses that interact directly with their customers are struggling more with the
work-from-home shift.

Recently, we checked in with the CFOs of 113 large North American companies. In terms of
revenue, nearly three-quarters say their companies are at 80% capacity or higher. And about
two-thirds of the CFOs say no more than 10% of their workforce is working at less than half
capacity.

Deloitte made the pivot as well. For the roughly 11,000 professionals in our audit and
assurance business, remote work suddenly became a consistent reality. The COVID-19 crisis in
the United States broke just as year-end audits were wrapping up and first-quarter filers were
about to begin. But we did it largely due to more than a decade of investments in our
organization’s digital transformation. Through the current crisis, we realized three important
insights that may help other businesses navigate the brave new world of scaled digital
working.

Insight #1: Focus on What Matters

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It’s much easier to deal with remote work when the entire organization has effective and well-
practiced project management, processes, and technology capabilities. As a discipline, project
management aims for clarity, collaboration, transparency, and foresight. When done well, this
serves to soothe anxiety and provide consistency to rally teams and clients to have confidence
and connectivity that are critical in a crisis. To enable this in a digital setting, we have turned to
the following.

Use the cloud. Cloud computing offers a virtual workspace for colleagues around the world.
Professionals can share ideas, track progress, and work on a single source of accurate data
asynchronously at their own schedule or in real-time, together. Combined with effective
investment in digital knowledge management capabilities, a cloud strategy provides a secure,
accessible source of information, thereby setting the stage for muted disruption of work and
comfort in the enablement of fact-based decision making.

Instill agile principles. Agile is a way of working that focuses on people over process, with
emphasis on iterative planning and incremental delivery of work. With roots in software
development, agile aims to meet business objectives and deliver value early and often. By
focusing on incremental changes and proactive communication, short daily “stand-up”
meetings keep everyone on the same page.

Agile principles applied to team meetings can keep team members engaged and confident in
what they need to do with continuance of the organization’s culture implicitly. Stand-up
meetings are short meetings (thus no virtual chairs required) where the agenda is simply
reporting on what was accomplished yesterday, what will be accomplished today, and what
might impede progress.

Focus on time management. Remote work gave us a new appreciation of the water-cooler
conversations we had in the office. Chance meetings, hallway hellos, lunchroom gatherings,
and impromptu one-on-ones are now gone. A great deal often got done in these one-minute
interactions throughout the day. With physical distance, our teams had to become deliberate
with their meetings, which can quickly become overwhelming. We learned to carefully guard
meeting times, protect both personal breaks and work timeslots, and optimize agendas for
maximum return on effort in an environment where many work boundaries have been
eliminated.

Leverage analytics and digital risk assessments. Finance projects, individual tasks, and even
internal audits are vulnerable to challenges like cost overruns, missed deadlines, and failure to
meet business or quality requirements. Remote work can easily amplify these risks, so it is
imperative to make a point of projects and judgments through fact-based data analysis.

Key to this is having a culture where understanding which activities are most important and
have the greatest impact are factored into the daily standup prioritization. Also, analytic
analyzers, outputs, and visualizations, combined with automated and smart project
management dashboarding, can help make this challenge seamless. The results can help
reduce the burden on team members and fewer asks of others to get the job done.

Insight #2: Make Work Portable Across Time and Space

As physical workplaces shuttered, many organizations rushed to stand up virtual workspaces,
messaging applications, video conferencing, and other collaboration tools. Companies
enhanced security and workplace policies to accommodate offsite work. But, as many
organizations discovered, technology isn’t just about providing the infrastructure for remote
work. It is really about enabling the very future of work itself.

Emphasize digitization. Although some of the information required to complete an audit has
been converted to digital format, organizations remain in various stages of their own digital
journey. We still come across manual work products when looking for evidence of the
completion of internal controls or process support in finance. The fact is, paper documents
remain common in many organizations. It may take a purposeful push to digitize in order to
achieve the repeatability, scalability, and consistency necessary for operating effectively in a
remote environment.

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Revisit the toolbox. Sometimes when we look through our toolboxes for a weekend project,
we can be surprised by what tools we have. The same can often be said about a team’s digital
toolbox. As companies transition from crisis response to recovery, it is a good time to revisit
their applications and overall suite of capabilities, because the components of the transition to
digital work might literally already be at your fingertips.

Preparing workflow and control documentation with a “digital reviewer” mindset may add
significant improvements to the cost of compliance while improving quality. Evidencing the
substance of review-type controls in digital notes, using digital tick marks effectively, and
applying a fresh mindset to processes not only can result in teams spending less time and
reducing their burden, but can open opportunities for enhanced workflow and robotic
process automation, or even blockchain use-cases. And with proper planning and training, this
exercise can accelerate an organization’s finance transformation and be the impetus to a real
cognitization program.

Don’t forget the data. Over time, we have made material investments in audit technologies to
reduce the burden on our clients, and the impact is substantive and rich. But a key learning is
that from the start, teams should develop a data strategy covering architecture, security, strict
rules for consistency, and planned use cases. Data should be protected and constantly
evaluated for insights and continuous quality improvements.

Move basic digital hygiene from the center to the field. In the age of remote work, systems and
networks require ongoing testing for security, connectivity, and other critical capabilities. But,
now more than ever, it is a responsibility that extends beyond the IT organization to include
the broader workforce. With much of the entire workforce homebound, it is critical to have a
playbook for professionals to conduct remote work, reminders of functionality, good cyber
practices, and tools to be effective and safe. To make this effective, it is necessary to provide
continuous learning beyond the pandemic, including making asks of professionals to test their
home environment and conduct scenario planning exercises.

Insight #3: Look to the Human Side of Digital Remote Work

Processes can be optimized for virtual work, and functionality can be platformed to create a
dynamic, work-from-anywhere experience for professionals and clients. But what about the
human side? Remote working tends to challenge long-held perceptions about what it takes to
be productive, valuable, and inclusive. Organizations can ease the transition by emphasizing
the following.

Respect boundaries. At Deloitte, many years, dollars, and proverbial beads of sweat went into
digitizing our audit experience and making it possible to be highly productive. The flip side is
that the fast pace and always-on connectivity enabled by our digitization can quickly become
the intensity norm. Against this always-on backdrop, individuals need room to pause, reflect,
think, and focus to get their own work done with balance. Professionals also need to be
reminded that they can disengage, which should be encouraged for long-term well-being.

Words matter. In a digital world, words exist longer than when just spoken into the air. Thus,
the method of communication matters. Sensitive or confidential information may require a
highly secure channel. And for remote teams, tone and inflection may be important to convey
feeling that can be lost in text, email, or chatrooms.

Provide clear leadership. From the top down, a relationship of trust, respect, open
communication, transparency, and clearly defined expectations is imperative to the success of
remote work. When times are uncertain, fact-based straight-talk from leadership about the
reality of what’s happening and what it means to the individual, the business, and the
community can ground professionals by removing some of the stress of uncertainty.
Consistency and frequency are grounding north stars.

Promote well-being. Telework can be lonely work even with endless video calls, leading to
feelings of disconnection from coworkers and challenges to maintain culture. Employers can
help with resources for maintaining a work-life balance and help with setting up an
appropriate home office while providing all-hands discussions about well-being, mental

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health, meditation, and even home-based exercise. Meanwhile, team members can help one
another by proactively checking in, making time for casual conversation, and having friendly
competitions to exercise and partake in other activities that promote well-being.

Resilience in Volatile Times

The digital transformation journey isn’t over — it will never be, as digital transformation by
definition is change. Opportunities are ever-evolving and the risk of unpredictable events will
remain. But a steadfast commitment to a culture of courage for a workforce to confidently
manage the unexpected with a full toolbox can help steady the course of business, even when
the outlook is beset by uncertainty.

Jon Raphael is managing partner of innovation and client service delivery for the audit and
assurance practice of Deloitte & Touche. This publication contains general information only
and Deloitte is not, by means of this publication, rendering accounting, business, financial,
investment, legal, tax, or other professional advice or services.

Cloud, contributor, COVID-19, digital transformation, remote workforce

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One response to “What COVID-19 Has Revealed About Working Remotely”

UntoldTech says: May 3, 2020 at 2:23 pm

COVID-19 forced companies to switch to remote working very quickly. Although this migration
went reasonably well in a short period of time, there are a few pitfalls that business managers
need to be aware of. After all, the implementation of remote working is broader and deeper
than most organizations realize. To be successful in the long term, a structured approach is
needed, together with a significant investment to change corporate culture.

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