Employee Management and Communication Processes During Trying Times (Completed)

Date: Tuesday, April 14, 2020
Instructor: Lynn Fountain
Begin Time:  10:00am Pacific Time
11:00am Mountain Time
12:00pm Central Time
1:00pm Eastern Time
CPE Credit:  1 hour for CPAs

As the news surrounding COVID-19 changes daily, CPA firms are monitoring developments and taking necessary precautions to ensure the safety of staff members and clients. Those efforts include varied types of communication procedures including teleconferencing, skype, zoom, e-mail, internal web-sites and other methods. Many of these methods require resilient leadership who can envision issues timely or pro-actively in order to adequately address concerns.

With the pace of the pandemic and the timing with which it has rolled out, firms have found themselves in the predicament of abiding by their clients “work-from-home” edicts. This can inflict greater difficulty in obtaining information needed for completing the first quarter filings. As such, it is critical that firms establish a solid process for employee and client communication.

Who Should Attend
CPA firm members, partners, directors, staff and clients who wish to understand protocols for proper communication with their auditors.

Topics Covered

  • Challenges being experienced in the CPA consulting industry
  • Evaluate methods to enable timely and effective communication with clients while working to meet their needs on a timely basis
  • Communication needs to ensure employees understand methods to protect themselves and clients and limit/mitigate the spread of disease at facilities
  • Methods to communicate with clients in the event any event or action would negatively impact performance of services
  • How to ensure clients that your firm has established effective employee protocols for public health events and working with clients

Learning Objectives

  • Identify the need to properly communicate firm contingency plans, including pandemic preparedness to all internal firm employees who have a role in implementation and execution
  • Identify requirements for investing in adequate communications technology to ensure employees can work virtually.
  • Recognize and examine needs to leverage work relationships with other firms or offices during this time of resource constraint
  • Identify client and internal IT infrastructure and evaluate risks or challenges in the event any given piece of infrastructure is off-line
  • Identify need to maintain a line of sight on regulatory and SEC requirements for public company reporting during this crisis period and properly communicate requirements to clients

Level
Basic

Instructional Method
Group: Internet-based

NASBA Field of Study
Business Management & Organization (1 hour)

Program Prerequisites
None

Advance Preparation
None

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