A day in lockdown with EQ – Dougie Rae

As we continue to work remotely, we remain focused on supporting our clients and maintaining contact with them and the rest of the EQ team.

To provide a glimpse into lockdown life, we asked various members of the team to share their experiences of what an average day working from home entails for them.

This week, we spoke to Dougie Rae, Partner in our Dundee office, to get an idea of how he is spending his time under the current circumstances.

What does an average day entail for you?

In many ways, a day at home – or the garage as it is in my case – hasn’t been too different from a day down at City Quay. Getting logged in, checking emails, seeing what I didn’t do from my ‘to do’ list from yesterday and then adding more to it.

What have you spent the majority of your time working on recently?

I’m dealing primarily with audit clients, which has raised some challenges – being able to get the right evidence and directors, having to predict future performance and timings has lead to more discussions and helped us get an even better understanding of their businesses and the ‘normal’ challenges they face, never mind what is facing them at the moment.

How have you been supporting clients throughout lockdown?

I’ve gone from helping a club get all the correct information in place to make a furlough claim for their staff to analysing the projections for the next 12 months of a 10 company UK group, and everything in between.

Keeping up to date with the various grants and support has taken a lot of effort, with new information released on a regular basis, changes made as systems bed in, and councils having different requirements or not all being on the same page straight away. The COVID-19 section of our website is updated regularly and is a great starting point to ensure you have the most up to date information.

Given the current circumstances, are you doing anything differently? 

I suppose everything’s a bit different to a greater or lesser degree. Our IT systems have stood up well to such a big change in a short period of time – you can plan for these things but you won’t really know how well they will work until you have to use them under these scenarios. This has allowed us to make a smooth transition to working from home and continuing to support our clients.

Keeping in touch is important, with both your colleagues and clients, and making use of the various web based meeting platforms has been interesting – I’ve used 3 different ones so far with varying levels of success.

But we are always available by phone or email if your wifi lets you down.

At the end of the workday, what do you look forward to the most?

We’ve been going out for family walks, which is a novelty, and means I’ve increased my exercising from zero to one walk a day.

We live close to the country at the north end of Dundee so there are some nice wooded walks rather than just street walking. We’ve come across a field where there’s a family of alpacas so most walks end up passing them in one direction or another.

While working from home, we are still offering the same level of support and remain contactable. You can reach us on any of our usual telephone numbers and email addresses, which you can find on the Our People page on this website.