Podcast #136: Succession planning for business owners under the new IHT rules, with Bishop Fleming’s Peter Ball
In this week’s episode of IFA Talk, we dive into the world of taxes, following changes to IHT rules. Recent changes and…
Prior to the pandemic, on Friday afternoons our team would always end the week by getting together. We have a bar upstairs in our office where we’d all come together at the end of the week. How could we involve that whilst working virtually? We introduced a regular Zoom team meetings on Friday afternoons – which I know a lot of firms have also done – which was good just to liven things up amongst the team and have a bit of fun. We’ve had competitions, games shows and a range of activities. Different people across the business were volunteering to take responsibility for it which helped us create variety. It helped us to create that community feeling remotely wherever we could.
We introduced more calls, including a weekly call on Monday mornings for the whole company to come together. This gives us a focus around what we’re doing as a business and monitoring how we were doing, what’s going on etc. There have been many things which have spun off from that. For example, a couple of our people volunteered to produce a video consisting of a range of montages that we were all asked to create as short videos from home. We did lots of different pieces like this.
On the dieting and exercise piece, this was our way of trying to support the team’s overall health and well-being aspects. We invited expert speakers to talk to us, some participating in our Monday morning sessions and others on the Friday sessions. For example, we enjoyed a virtual session with a local chef who is just about to launch his own Amazon Prime series. He specialises in Chinese cooking to bring the Chinese takeaway to home on a Friday afternoon – but a healthier version of it. We learned how we could make a few subtle changes to make it healthier but it was still very tasty. Most importantly, we all enjoyed doing it together.
On Friday afternoons we organised some fitness instructors for the team. We had boxercise, pilates, yoga and other activities too.
Also on our Monday sessions, we used a speaker who was in charge of the League Managers’ Association’s fitness and well-being programme for a number of years. We asked him to run a ten week programme for us. This consisted of bite-sized, 45 minute or 1 hour slots over that period to try and get our people to understand some of the things that mattered most and those which didn’t.
The final piece of that was that we provided all of the team with a fitness tracker device. This was to encourage them to get out and do more physical activity. Following on from this, we created a step challenge which was to walk to Las Vegas. Everybody enjoyed it – in fact we all loved doing it. We separated up into teams according to age, so we had those in their twenties, thirties, forties, fifties etc. And the fifties ran away with it. There were prizes for that. There was also a bit of fun here as we had a bit of controversy in that some people were cycling rather than walking. So we decided to do it again this year, as the walk to Chennai. The team in Chennai are doing it too and they’ve all got their fitness trackers. There’s a lot less sea on the Chennai walk than there was on the walk to Las Vegas so there’s much more variety this time round!
We also used this to launch our ‘cycle to work’ scheme so for those people that were frustrated by the cyclists getting an advantage last time round, there’s no excuse now. Whether you’re walking or cycling we don’t mind. As long as we’re getting out and getting fit. In summary, it’s a continuation of a theme that’s been with us since the middle of last year.
Our next thought was as all this has been so good for our staff, how do we involve other people? So in February we’ve launched a ‘Wellness Wednesday’ series. We’ve got some of the people who’ve been talking to us as a team so that clients, friends and family can also take part. Our first one was “yogalates” which was very interesting indeed! Our clients have been so keen to get involved. They really want to be part of it and to be part of what we’re doing. There is much research done that shows us that good service means happy staff. When they are more engaged and more interested, we definitely see the value through our client satisfaction feedback.
SW: Would you encourage other advice business to up the ante when it comes to working more proactively not heir teams’ development? If so, why?
SF: Yes I’d definitely recommend it. For me, this all links into our values and what we stand for. Community is really important to us and we do a lot of charitable work at Furnley House. The link between charity and people is very clear. All the same things we’ve talked about in regard to looking after your team’s needs are linked to CSR and the whole theme. The reality is that if you look after your people and people feel valued and can feel like they are part of something that is making a meaningful difference, it brings real benefits to the business. It means that they are more likely to enjoy working for you, they’re more likely to stay working with you and they will be more engaged in the work that they do. It creates a classic shared sense of ownership and sense of purpose amongst the team which I think is what we’ve managed to achieve here. For me, the Covid-19 pandemic was really tough. But the way the whole team rose to the challenge was driven by the fact that we are very close, we are one team. For us seeing that in action means that we do get the rewards from putting that into practice. From a personal perspective, although I’m a business owner I still work here! With it being a fun place to be and to enjoy our time whilst we’re at work is hugely important. You spend a lot of your life in work so it’s all the better if it’s enjoyable time!
About Stefan Fura
Together with Neil Haley and John Woolhouse, Stefan is a founding partner of Furnley House.
He started his career in financial services working in a High Street Bank, but as his knowledge and experience grew, Stefan realised that he could offer his clients a better service if he were not tied to a limited number of specific providers. Then as Furnley House expanded, Stefan stepped away from advising clients to focus on running the business.
