My Dear Members,
I feel
very proud and satisfied as I write to you for the last time as President of
our illustrious Society. It is an honour and a privilege to have led the
Bombay Chartered Accountants’ Society during a memorable and
unprecedented year. We continue to march ahead and strive to achieve greater
heights of performance year after year by building on the excellent work done
by all previous Presidents. The last three months have been challenging and unmatched
for us in terms of conducting our normal activities of education, training and
spreading knowledge. But we converted all the challenges that came our way into
opportunities and continued with our endeavour of spreading knowledge with even
more vigour and zeal.
I am
happy to inform you that we quickly transited to an online platform and were
able to reach a much wider audience and get high profile and knowledgeable
speakers for the BCAS platform. All this was possible since there were
no geographical restrictions. To our immense satisfaction, our internal
assessment actually shows that we have been successful in delivering more
man-hours of training by way of live attendance and follow-up hits on our
YouTube channel. We managed to clock almost half of the man-hours of training
(during the three months of lockdown) that we were usually clocking in an
entire year through physical meetings. Things worked out best for us because we
made the best of how things worked out. I expect this trend to continue for
some more time yet and I thank all of you for supporting BCAS during
these testing times. This success is only because of the faith and the
patronage of all of you.
A balanced approach is required
It has
been more than three months into the national lockdown and work from home (WFH)
has caught the fancy of many, including some marquee IT and multinational
companies. However, according to a reported survey, some of the employees want
to get back to office. ‘The lack of human interaction is a problem – there’s
something about face-to-face interaction that can’t be replaced.’ According to
some HR professionals, there are groups of employees who enjoy working from the
office and want to get back there. At the same time, there are several
companies mulling the possibility of shifting to a complete WFH mode on a
permanent basis. According to them, productivity has gone up and a lot of
travel time is saved. But the question remains: does work from home really
work? According to the survey, it is premature to conclude whether WFH has
succeeded. The survey adds that social capital is missing and this is built by
social interactions while working together and knowing co-workers well enough
to establish a bond of human relationships and emotions.
Success
is achieved by teamwork and because co-workers have known and have intimately
interacted with each other for years. Banter over a cup of coffee during a
break is very much part of team-building and camaraderie and this social
capital is missing while working remotely from home. People will continue to
work from home, but in my view if a balanced view is not taken, they will
become robots lacking the all-important human touch. In time, fatigue will set
in and productivity may actually come down in the longer run. So, at least till
normalcy returns, we will have to adopt a hybrid or mixed model of WFH by
allowing some people to choose their preferred option. However, follow-up with
physical interactions (with all required safety norms) at regular intervals
should be integrated into the work culture.
Final Good-Bye!
On 6th
July, 2020 I complete my term as President of this esteemed institution
and I bid farewell to all of you with a great sense of happiness, satisfaction
and achievement. In the past twelve months I have tried to deliver my best to
the Society and tried to strengthen its existing goodwill, brand value
and reputation built over the years. During the year gone by, we strove to
increase our reach by reaching out to a much wider range of constituents beyond
our traditional cycle of influence. We tried out new formats for our
educational events, invited trainers from across fields and from a
cross-section of professional backgrounds and tried out new mediums of
dissimilating knowledge. We also had focused events on specific sectors,
emerging areas of practice and various non-technical but important areas of
personal and professional development. Besides serving our members,
organisationally also, the Society consolidated its position by various
measures of financial prudence, cost savings and infrastructure building. We
also worked earnestly to harness talent and build future leaders. At a personal
level, this tenure as President helped me further to develop leadership skills
and I have learnt how to handle different people and different situations more
efficiently.
Finally,
I wish incoming President Suhas Paranjpe and the new team all the very
best for the coming year. I have no doubt that it will be full of events and
innovative programmes.I am sure under his leadership our Society will
successfully venture into uncharted territory while continuing to flourish in
its traditional areas.
I started
this journey with anxiety, not knowing how the year will pan out but I created
some beautiful memories, made wonderful friends on the way and now I say good-bye
and a big THANK YOU for all your love, support and affection.
With Best
Regards,
CA Manish
Sampat
President
