YOU’RE DUMPED!

 

I work in the professional services sector myself (I run a recruitment agency… things are tough) and so I know that when the pandemic hit, things got scary. As a service offering, recruitment fell flat on it’s face, and so we had to “pivot”. We invested all our energy in our partnerships, sharing information, providing insights, helping guide business decision-making about their workforces. We researched, investigated, shared. We developed new services, products and designed some fun, free wellbeing activities that we pushed out to our broader networks to keep spirits high. We engaged with experts in their fields to keep employers and employees moving forward, but we expected nothing in return. We’re still creating extra value. We still expect nothing.

 

So being in professional services, I expected to see this from our providers in the sector too, especially our Accountant. However, when we fought our way through Jobkeeper alone, assessed our own eligibility, made the application and set up the accounting system, I felt a little neglected. When we had to find information elsewhere on the cash flow boost, watched countless government announcements and navigated the commercial tenancy code of conduct without help, I felt somewhat jilted. And when I heard that we’d missed out on a possible grant that we didn’t know was available, I felt well and truly abandoned.

 

Am I expecting too much? Am I being unreasonable? They’re busy right? They have other things to contend with? They can’t be expected to provide that information to everyone?

Well I started to hear about other businesses, of the partnerships they had with their Accountants, of the Accountants who actually called them. I heard that they called to tell them that they were eligible for Jobkeeper and ask them if they wanted the application completed and submitted for them! I heard about an Accountant who urged a business to get their finances reconciled so they could lodge their BAS and get their cashflow boost immediately. I even heard about an Accountant offering practical advice on renegotiating tenancies with insights into what other businesses were doing. And of course I heard about the grants being granted, because of the proactive work of the Accountant.