Values: living them in difficult times

Published 6 October 2020

Over the last month or so some firms have been telling us about their new offices, or their new branding; sometimes with links to their values. It is always lovely to share your news, and that is something that we love to do too.

But, in my opinion, timing is everything.

We havent got a new office: nothing to share there. And no new branding either. Neither are needed, but that is not the point - Now is not the time, in my opinion.

We have cleaned our office. A lot. And we have changed the layout. But most importantly our office has never closed.

Keeping the office open has been paramount: you see one of our core values is availability. To close it would have been the easy decision, but that would not have been right for you – when times are hard it is then that we should live our values rather than tell you about values that have not been mentioned before. Ours have been in place for years, and as I say, it is now that you deliver on them.

Firstly, we made sure that our team were safe, and we made common sense decisions based on the data and information available. It is only relatively recently that the mental health aspect of the Covid lockdown are being recognised. We recognised that immediately and made special arrangements where necessary.

Only when those plans were in place, did we commit to keeping our office open, and we redoubled our efforts to be available for our clients. I have always taken calls out of office hours and at weekends. But over the last few months I have been making them too, calling clients that I knew had worries and concerns rather than waiting until Monday morning for them to call me.

We have talked a lot about cake of late. Why cake? Well how lovely to come into work on a Monday morning knowing that at eleven o’clock you will have something lovely to eat with your cup of tea. Affability is important too, which is why, for the team, we launched the Great CBSL Accountants Bake Off. Aran Bhullar was the worthy winner this year with her six-layer rainbow cake. The silent pedant within me thought of Richard battling in vain: I counted seven, but still scored her a 10!

We have kept our name as CBSL Accountants: not a time for us to step away from the “Ronseal Approach”.

Yes, we do things that others do not: we are the leading Corporate Finance firm in Shropshire, but at our core, we are Chartered Accountants, and always will be. Underneath our name it says, “For you and your business”, which I hope you have seen us deliver on, rather than just tell you about.