Working and Managing Tax Departments.

• Author: Doyle, Andy

Today, as a result of COVID-19, the words remote and virtual are omnipresent and ubiquitous. And, yes, those words are very familiar now to those who toil in the tax industry. As you know by now, TEGs Annual Meeting this year was virtual, and, not surprisingly, one of the most lively and informative sessions was a roundtable discussion, "Working and Managing Tax Departments Remotely: Tax and Operational Considerations for the Business Enterprise." We turned that discussion, in which knowledgeable tax professionals participated, into this issue's roundtable. Those participants were Sharon Rosiak, tax technology director, strategic accounts, for Thomson Reuters; Jeffrey Friedman, partner with Eversheds Sutherland; Evan Croen, vice president, software, at Bloomberg Tax & Accounting; and Mark Walztoni, managing director of Crowe's Human Capital Practice. Andy Doyle, partner at High Plains Advisors, moderated the discussion.

Andy Doyle: Our discussion today will be broken up into six sections: health and safety of employees; enabling a remote workforce; maintaining company culture and morale; leadership capabilities needed for now; tax department priorities; and finally, the future: Which of these changes are temporary, and which are more long-term or permanent? Our first topic is the health and safety of employees. Back when all of this began, and as cases [of COVID-19] began to spike--and as cases now begin to spike again--the health and safety of our employees is the first priority. And indeed, a survey taken by our own Mark Walztoni's firm, Crowe, found that sixty-eight percent of employers believed health and safety of employees was their top concern. So, our first question goes to Sharon. Sharon, what were some of the early policies that your company implemented to protect employees and keep them safe?

Sharon Rosiak: This is a really good start. We saw travel restrictions in early March with guidance to use our judgment as far as making travel. What was really noteworthy was quickly announcing full support of authorities to help curtail the spread of the virus. We quickly spun up an internal website where we were able to have real-time COVID-19 updates, see information on office closures, working-from-home tips, and video trainings on best practices for working from home. Most importantly, the encouragement to look out for our health and our personal well-being. Q&A's continue to be updated through today with questions and answers employees have. Updates are indicated in red. There were emails coming out this morning. I think first and foremost was really the safety of employees. I really commend Thomson Reuters for being so proactive with communication, especially in a time of such uncertainty.

Doyle: That's great. Mark, as you've been consulting with companies, can you talk about some of the best practices you encountered with the health and safety of employees?

Mark Walztoni: Sure. Crowe announced a "virtual-first" policy within the first week, and we were no longer authorized to go to client sites. Partners told clients that, for safety reasons, we wouldn't be traveling. All international travel was halted, and domestic travel required an approval from our COO, which, as you might imagine, made the approval queue a very small queue.

Doyle: That's great. Evan, do you have anything to add on what Bloomberg did for its employees?

Evan Croen: It's an interesting point. Bloomberg has such an in-the-office culture, but what was really spectacular to see from the firm was a real understanding that we needed to take pretty decisive action. So, I think, like everybody, there was frequent communications to start. There was the travel ending pretty abruptly, but what was great to see was the immediate shutdown once it became clear that there was community spread. What was really good to see also was not just the HR teams, but teams like IT and other departments you might not necessarily think about, step up to make sure that everybody could work remotely effectively, and they put in long hours to make it happen. It was a total team effort to really move to remote work. We've since started to talk about moving back and have some voluntary returns, and the efforts they put around that as well have been really something to see.

Doyle: Jeff, any final points to add?

Jeffrey Friedman: We have a real mixed bag. I mean, it's been a "things have gone great, things have been awful" kind of a story. We made an office-by-office decision in my firm, so some offices were closed absolutely given local laws and rules, New York being an example. Certain offices we had a more flexible approach in other geographies, where those who wanted to volunteer could in fact go in, but they had to go through a process--you know how much everybody loves processes. We made a mandatory health certification app available. You had to also send an email message to the managing partner for that office to get his or her approval to come in, and you had to follow certain protocols, which I don't think would be shocking to anybody, which included mask-wearing. Then I would say the psychological side, maybe, where there are certain partners in certain cities that really want to go in, and certain associates in certain cities really want to go in, and then there are other partners and other associates who don't want to go in at all but feel kind of pressured, maybe, because certain colleagues are going in. So we had to deal with that in a very upfront way and make sure we're very transparent and candidly repeating ourselves over and over again that there's no expectation. In fact, there's an expectation that you don't go in. We don't want people in the offices, irrespective of cities, but if you so choose to, you can do so, but don't expect any of your colleagues to go in. That was the initial fallout that we've been pretty much living with ever since, although I expect it to be evolving in the coming months, Andy.

Doyle: Yeah, and I think that part is very important, that everybody is going to react to this very differently, and that we need to be cognizant of that as we try to move forward with the workplace. Mark, how can firms and leaders build remote-employee resiliency skills and mitigate potential health and safety issues, you know, more serious than just an uncomfortable caboose from an uncomfortable chair?

Resiliency Skills

Walztoni: Well, I wish that was the crisis we were solving--uncomfortable chairs. So why care about resiliency? Well, many health professionals have said there are really two pandemics. The first is a physical health pandemic, and the second is a mental health pandemic. The mental health pandemic is a trailing problem in that we don't know the full impact, but in other ways like drug abuse and domestic violence it is already here. So, I'll just talk about how Crowe is addressing these issues and practices I see at our clients and within the marketplace. I previously mentioned the "virtual-first" policy. We also classified each office from "completely closed" to "open with return-to-work protocols at each stage." The other piece on the resiliency skills was interesting. We had a firm-wide partner and principal and director webcast with the CEO and a national speaker by the name of John O'Leary, who wrote the book On Fire: The 7 Choices to Ignite a Radically Inspired Life, and he had spoken at prior partner meetings. He was talking about resetting, redefining, and resurging. Something that was powerful about that message was--and I see this sometimes in the M&A world--the urge to use happy talk, you know, "It's going to be fine. We'll just bear down and get on with it," basically, rather than to say upfront "This situation is big, and there's going to be significant impact." So, some process things, more feedback from pulse surveys, resources on the website for clients and also employees, but something else-and I'll just close with this, Andy--that really impressed me was the authenticity of our CEO on that resiliency call, that authenticity is the antithesis of happy talk. And the head of our tax practice saying, "I didn't expect when I'm a couple years from retirement to find Froot Loops in the backseat of my car, but we're taking care of our grandchildren while their parents work, and those Froot Loops and car seats are here to stay." So, I think there's a process component, there is a safety component, and the authenticity acknowledged if it were OK to not feel good about what's going on and recognize everyone needs to change.

Doyle: Absolutely, and I think that authenticity can help send out a signal that the things you're feeling, we're all feeling, and it's OK to feel them, and that's very important from a mental health perspective.

Rosiak: I think that Mark's point is also very important. One of the things that Thomson Reuters did was to encourage thinking about the whole person, the family, and things like Froot Loops in the backseat. There was an additional nineteen days of paid time off just to take care of family things, to be used when you needed to use it. A lot of folks in the beginning needed to accommodate children not in school, taking care of parents, and just the fact that that puts an added stress on life. Just being able to give that time to employees to adjust to everything being remote and the world being turned upside down.

Croen: That's something we really have pushed. One of the things, talking about paid time off, we've actually had to really push people to take vacation. One of the things we noticed--and I'm sure everybody has seen that, too--is we saw large balances of vacation days accruing and not being used. I think early days we all had sort of an acute safety concern; we didn't really know what was happening, we didn't know how it was spread. But since then, I think we've transitioned to more of a malaise, but we still have to watch out for burnout. So, one of the things we...