In today’s episode we look at how the very traditional industry of accountancy services is adapting itself to the needs of 21st century clients, when we interview our own accountants! And we also bring you a Wellness segment, and a return to perennial favourite ‘Oh No My Team’s Gone Remote!”  Thank you for all the feedback on our recent special episode all about Twitter conversations and themes http://wlpodcast.libsyn.com/twitter-conversations-worth-podcasting-about – don’t forget to join in the conversation, we’re @Virtualteamw0rk. Lots going on, including updates on our upcoming book launch for Thinking Remote: Inspiration for Leaders of Distribute Teams. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thinking-Remote-Inspiration-leaders-distributed-ebook/dp/B07LDFGVR8/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1545043447&sr=1-1  But now, let’s hear from Jennifer:   5.44 21st Century Work-Life: Jennifer Denning, Founder, Finling https://www.finling.co.uk/ Specialised in supporting entrepreneurial fast-changing businesses with particular expertise in technology, property, and business services, Finling were a great choice for Virtual Not Distant. They operate from a colocated office (in fact, a single room) in Wimbledon, London, and run face-to-face events to get to know their clients – with whom they work entirely virtually.  They help clients choose and implement the right cloud software, driven by founder Jennifer’s fascination with the evolution of technology to become accessible to SMEs – businesses who now need something beyond traditional high street compliance accounting. Because the world of “beautifully organised and tabbed files” is starting to evolve beyond existence – today we need data engineers in accounting. Change is getting faster, and it’s not always about growth, but the complex pivots of entrepreneurial life.  Jennifer’s work with their clients suggested a lot of parallels with what we do here at Virtual Not Distant in fact, bridging HR and tech to provide a holistic and flexible tailored solution. Working on an ‘open book’ basis with clients, Finling are more like an outsourced finance department than a traditional supplier. This creates an unusually close working relationship based on effective collaboration, often including coaching on use of appropriate tools for secure online sharing and effective process control and discipline – because we all know that going online can expose holes in procedures where they are woolly. Everyone benefits from using software correctly, and getting the right services in place helps their clients’ businesses thrive. Whilst they work remotely with clients, their core team all work from the central office, (though some specialist contractors are more flexible, including work at home and on-site with clients)  This suits their high-pressure high-trust environment of professional client service work. But they use a lot of technical collaboration tools to manage the work, which is no different to what they would do remotely – in accounting, everything needs an audit trail, so you create a task or instruction for someone electronically instead of turning around and asking them. This enables a lot of the work to be made visible without actually talking about it, creating a different quality to the interactions in the office. “Sometimes we’re silent for a long time” – A really interesting perspective into how people share and connect as a team when the work itself doesn’t need explaining A really interesting conversation all round, in which we also talk about Open Banking, and how new standards are making it even easier to integrate all the financial tools and services businesses use, and work with clients as they expand internationally You can connect with Jennifer at https://www.finling.co.uk/    42.25 Wellness: Commuting and health We wanted to discuss this article: https://www.vitality.co.uk/media/long-commutes-costing-a-weeks-worth-of-productivity/ We often talk about the quality of life gains which