Foreward by Andrew Chilvers
Businesses across the world are undergoing the biggest remote working experiment since Europeans first sailed from their home ports to set up trading posts in Asia 500 years ago.
This time around, however, companies are moving colleagues out of their plush city centre locations to set up offices at home. What was unthinkable only a few months ago is now the new modus operandi for professional services firms and their clients. Crisis management and business continuity have indeed come of age thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.
All this may be difficult for businesses that prefer traditional ways of operating, but most are changing their habits of a lifetime out of necessity. The old adage of preparing for the worst while expecting the best has never been more apt.
Will the professional service business model change as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic?
Yes.
‘Traditional’ professional service firms (PSFs) will be impacted by the fundamental changes in societal values and behaviours arising from COVID-19 and will need to change their traditional business models to cope. The traditional model for delivering professional services was already under significant pressure pre COVID-19, from both clients and junior staff.
Staff and clients now know that remote working ‘works’ and are rapidly getting comfortable with and learning how to optimise video conferencing and other virtual collaboration tools. Reluctance to commute/work on-site will continue for some time to come and will accelerate the decline of face-to-face meetings.
COVID-19’s financial impact on PSF balance sheets will have a profound effect on budget allocation across cost lines such as rent and technology spend. Budget spend on rent will be bad. Spend on remote work technologies will increase. PSFs will reduce premium rent spend, moving to smaller core office space in lower rent locations, to be used for client meetings only. Remote working/hot desking and indeed a diffused location strategy, will be core to service sale and delivery practices from now on and will have bottom line cost benefits, reducing rent/staff costs (once the required tech spend is absorbed).
This new normal will see a further decline in physical transaction completions with PSFs defaulting to electronics completion meetings, relying on electronic signatures etc to the maximum extent permitted under the law. Working to a remote/diffused location model will have minimal impact on brand reputation of well run and agile PSFs. Electronic marketing and client connectivity has been and remains core to brand/marketing strategies for progressive firms.
Clients will demand that PSFs bring the best virtual and collaborative practices and technologies to bear on what we do for them. This will be a basic ‘hygiene’ factor for client decisions as to which PSFs they engage.
Remote working is being seen as the new normal, how will this affect the culture of professional services firms?
Remote working will challenge the traditional hierarchical culture in many PSFs, but will provide greater opportunities for part-time employees and consultants who have valuable skills to offer.
PSFs will need to develop end-to-end training and HR strategies to enable them to engender and maintain their unique ‘firm culture’, assist staff to keep in touch and connected in real ways across the virtual divide and indeed to mentor and produce future generations of professionals. From now on time spent in the office will be focused on: a) ‘connectivity’ activities, keeping staff connected through face-to-face interaction and learning; and b) client interaction. Time ‘On the Tools’ actually executing work will increasingly be done remotely.
As the opportunity and appetite for face-to-face marketing and sales pitches declines, social media and online marketing will become even more critical for the growth of PSFs brand and business. Accepting that it’s hard to ‘get your foot in the door’ or indeed to ‘stay sticky’ with a target or client over email, we will all need to incorporate Facetime/Teams/Video conferencing into our armoury.
With so many people now working from home using unsecure internet networks, should there be updated rules for data protection compliance? If so, should they be more relaxed given the crisis wrought by the pandemic?
We don’t believe that the focus should be on updating GDPR rules, rather the focus should be on assessing and clarifying how those existing rules are interpreted and enforced during the current crisis. We also don’t believe that internet connectivity/resilience/security is a COVID-19 issue per se, network availability and resilience remains a basic hygiene factor.
Various supervising authorities, including the Irish Data Protection Commissioner, have indicated they will adopt a reasonable and pragmatic approach during the lockdown in assessing compliance with the GDPR. They are recognising these unprecedented circumstances and the need for certain organisations to prioritise other issues over data protection compliance, which is sensible.
The Irish DPC has issued helpful guidance as to how employers and their employees can maintain appropriate data security measures while working remotely, entitled “Protecting Personal Data when working remotely”. That guidance sets out sensible “tips” to keep personal data safe while working remotely, dealing with the use of remote devices and the need to keep them secure etc.
Self-evidently PSFs should still ensure that their employees are aware of the increased data protection risks which do arise with remote working, to include providing employees with training and, in Ireland, with a copy of the Irish DPC’s guidance. PSFs should also review and take necessary precautions with their own systems and practices where required. Policies should be reviewed and extra security measures for homeworking should be taken where risks are identified.
That said, it is important that any new policies and procedures implemented by PSFs re data protection are necessary and proportionate in the circumstances. As to the question whether healthcare should trump data privacy, we again believe that the Irish DPC has struck the right balance.
As the Duke of Wellington (who grew up a stone’s throw from our office in Dublin) apparently said: “No plan survives contact with the enemy”.
