Goetzman Group in the news! We are honored to be featured in the Los Angeles Times article, “Adaptation, determination, luck: How four small businesses are surviving the pandemic”.
Going all in on remote work, maybe forever…
Greg Goetzman, 58, isn’t much of a gambler, which is probably a good thing because his company helps other firms keep their financial houses in order.
But when the coronavirus sent people home, he quickly placed a bet on a template for the post-COVID 19 workplace: as many as half of his employees regularly working from home and collaborating with the main office.
Woodland Hills-based Goetzman Group, with nearly 100 employees, competes with larger accounting and consulting firms and temp agencies. Goetzman said he realized that he needed to carefully outfit his employees to keep getting the job done, with equipment and systems to connect and communicate safely and effectively.
“When we go into companies, we need to perform from Day 1,” Goetzman said. “So we’ll deploy as many resources as necessary in order to help our people have what they need to be successful with our clients.”
Goetzman didn’t know whether his employees would adjust well to working from home or whether clients would switch to bigger rivals. But employees and clients have embraced the change, he said.
“I haven’t seen a drop in work quality. I think there’s a real revolution of thought in seeing the value of people working from home,” Goetzman said. “We are fortunate that our consultants are flexible and accustomed to working from different locations, therefore, they were prepared and there were no issues transitioning to working remotely.”
“We are changing the way we do business,” he said. “It’s going to be some blend of working from home and work from the office. We maybe had 20% of our employees working remotely before COVID. It’s closer to 100% now. I think we will end up somewhere in the middle of that.”
Goetzman said his company’s workload was increasing — although revenue is down slightly so far this year — whether his clients were succeeding in getting back to business or struggling to determine if they could remain viable.
The changes have been quite a pivot for Goetzman and his 22-year-old firm. Over the years, his company has built up a list of clients including Amgen, Walt Disney Co. and Toyota. But that was done the old-school way.
“It’s challenging now because there isn’t that personal connection,” Goetzman said. “My company was built on me being able to look somebody in the eye and talk to them about our services and learn about their companies. A phone call or a Zoom just doesn’t feel the same.”
Perhaps that’s why Goetzman says he has returned to an old habit, writing appreciative letters to clients, with an ink pen, in longhand.
“It gets a personal message across in a way that an email or a phone call or a message may not,” he said. “It’s you taking the time to really give some deeper thought to the business relationship and what it means to you.”
Article Source : https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-10-29/pandemic-business-change-survive
