Survive, Adapt, Transform Ep. 3 | Don’t Waste a Crisis

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — The coronavirus pandemic had a lasting impact on businesses across the country. For some businesses, it provides an opportunity to make the most of the situation and effect transformations within the company.

HD Davis CPAs, for example, has completely changed its entire office setup, says Tim Petrey, managing director. From employing more virtual meetings to bringing in a consulting group to improve communication among employees, the company has made some changes that “turns out, we needed to be doing a long time ago,” Petrey says.

“This was just the push that we needed to get out of our comfort zone to do some of these things that we should have been doing for years,” he says.

As the virus continues to escalate, Petrey advises businesses to continue to find ways to change and adapt to the new way of doing things. He spoke with Jeff Herrmann, CEO of The Youngstown Publishing Co., for the third installment of the “Survive, Adapt, Transform” video series.

Regarding communication, HD Davis has been holding more smaller group huddles where two to three employees hold a virtual meeting to “catch up and see what’s going on,” Petrey says. They also have weekly meetings between partners to discuss what’s happening in the different divisions of the company.

The company has also implemented its own weekly State of the Union address, he says.

“We hop on a call at the end of the week and say ‘Here’s what’s going on,’ ” he says. “Here’s who we hired. Here’s what kind of training we’ve got going on. Here’s what kind of clients we’ve got going on. Here’s the problems we’re running into.”

From there, the company has developed sharing boards to get all employees’ feedback to promote more effective meetings where problems and concerns are addressed while working remotely.

“People work differently in the office and remotely. And what used to motivate them in the office” is different when working from home, he says. “You’ve got to learn how to adapt and manage that different environment.”

For more insights from Petrey, watch the video above.

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