Dear all
Many thanks for the responses we’ve had over the past few days to our email – we are glad you have found it useful.
I wanted to send an update following the change in government advice.
Office closure
Following the announcement last night encouraging businesses to start working from home we have commenced the relevant processes to enable this to happen with our office in Cardiff now closing for the foreseeable future. As mentioned previously the impact on our services should be minimal, although due to the speed at which the change in advice has happened we are expecting an initial 24-48hr period of adjustment which may impact work planned for the next couple of days. If this is likely to impact you we have already contacted you early this morning to let you know. Once this period is over we should be back to business as usual albeit from a distance.
We will be prioritising all March payrolls this week, and will be sending out the reports for authorisation and payment by the end of this week, assuming we receive the data from individual clients in time – Susie will be in contact with most payroll clients either today or Thursday if you have not heard form her already.
On a practical level the physical building is still open and will be remaining open, as per their agreed contingency plans. This means any post will be safely stored and we will be informed so that I can come and collect it on a bi-weekly basis. If you are sending files or other documents to us and have concerns please do contact us beforehand as we do have alternative arrangements in place if necessary, but we have worked with the staff in this building for over 2 years now and have total confidence in their systems.
Visits
We have also now amended our policy on visiting clients and for the foreseeable future we are cancelling all visits to clients and will be conducting all work remotely. We will be in contact with clients on a weekly basis who have planned independent examinations, board meetings, etc as to how we will manage individual planned events. We can still facilitate meetings via our conferencing software GoToMeeeting which enables us to share our screen with you and vice versa so all meetings should still be able to happen in some format.
Staffing
Currently none of our staff or families have been impacted directly, but all our staff, as you are probably aware, have young children and its increasingly likely that over the next few weeks schools may close, and the government is planning for that eventuality. As a business we have already taken steps to ensure we can continue to provide a normal service should this happen, however we would ask clients to be sensitive to the needs of our staff - we have implemented flexible working arrangements to facilitate any consequences of a change in government policy.
We really do understand how unnerving this time is for clients and our two priorities are safety of our staff and clients, and continuity of service for our clients – if you do have any concerns about the above please do contact me directly.
We would also appreciate being kept informed of any changes in the way you are working and also anything we can do to help during this time.
With best wishes to you, your staff and families during this time