Space to develop a “company culture”

La Verrière was created in 2016, inside the Majestic residence in Cimiez. In the face of the health crisis, the sexologist has not let down her co-workers and her business model.

Why did you decide to do joint work?

We had space and, above all, I wanted to share with other professions, which are complementary, to bring clients and create synergies for them. At the same time, I had prepared breakfasts and evenings in hotels, with clients, to brief them on a lot of topics which did not fall within the scope of statutory accounting.

They liked it very much and did not go away. I told myself that business leaders are alone and that they need to break this unity.

What does this bring to your teams?

It was a way to explain to them, for example, what a business leader is, because in an ordinary accounting firm, you hear about the files.

A customer is a human being who fights for his company to survive and even survive, and every time he takes a step forward, he has concerns and spends his life solving problems. So I wanted my team to chat with them over lunch, at the coffee machine… and to learn about this company culture.

And for clients?

Sometimes my co-workers are my clients, but this isn’t made for it. This gives them a different view of the accountant.

The client sees that we are immersed in the entrepreneurial environment and realizes that we have other topics of conversation than accounting or taxation.

Isn’t this a way to build a network?

fully. This is the icing on the cake. While we’re doing events, we’re getting involved in networking. For years, we’ve been doing mini mornings and conferences on law and numbers topics. There were professionals who came and communicated among themselves. We passed by and saw them. We also held Azur Pro Com evenings where everyone from outreach came and knew La Verrière, and got people talking about us. Then we went to listen to conferences which were really interesting and met many people. So yeah, we’re in the process of creating a network.

With Covid, have you been able to carry on?

Yes, not a problem. Obviously, during confinement, we were closed, like everyone else. When we came back, we realized the businessmen wanted to come back, and they didn’t want to stay home at all. It was breaking the isolation that really mattered. We’ve even had more co-workers since then. Over time, it is difficult to quantify, but we should have about thirty co-workers out of thirty-five (offices are available).

Have periods of imprisonment without joint work affected the company?

A little because obviously these are resources that don’t come in, because I gave up on rents. But right after that, people came back. Once there was a second confinement, we took measures where not everyone was there at the same time.

How did your employees react to the closings?

We were very careful. During Covid, we established a multi-channel intercom. I saw everyone every day. We came home at noon on Monday, March 17, 2020. In the evening, we did our first zoom together. From the next day, I had set up the team meetings, where everyone saw each other. We put our young apprentices underemployment because in terms of their studies, they had a lot to absorb, and then we gradually brought them back.

Everyone has really given us time to find their own rhythm. We also have one of our collaborators, who suggested that we set up a Slack thread, a discussion thread, which was called Covid-19 in which it was forbidden to talk about work at home. We talked to each other about it, sent each other pictures of our cakes… and every Friday evening at five we zoomed in with the whole team and told each other about our week. How were we going…

Isn’t this a form of co-working at home?

likely. But they are still eager to get back to work. They don’t want to stay home at all. private trainees. For others, we spent a day or two working remotely. But we were already doing it. It was nothing new.

In the end, has the way you work with Covid changed?

I would say we were very early. I think it highlights the digital trend we’ve already taken. That is, to work remotely, to communicate by video. Today, our customers travel less and so do we. Instead of wasting an hour on the trip, when we have a quarter of an hour to talk to each other, we say it to each other in a “video”. In the same way, since we always have sanitary measures in place, we are never all around, and we do our meetings mixed in, with the people in the meeting room and others on Zoom.

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