Keep Calm and Work From Home

Hello everyone,

Right now, COVID-19 is causing a lot of uncertainty and challenges to businesses all over Canada and the US.  We are adapting to all the changes that are being thrown at us, to keep our team as safe as possible and not have any interruption to our business.  We want to let you know what our plan is for now and the near future.

It's important we stay home.  It's the way we are all going to save lives.  Not just ours, but the people we come into contact with -- family members, co-workers, friends, and people we would pass by on the street.  We started moving our team members to remote work a week ago, and we should be done by this coming Wednesday thanks to the heroic efforts of our IT team.  Our staff are set up to operate on our network and be part of our phone system, so to anyone outside our business, it should be seamless whether staff are working in our branch or remotely.  Fortunately, because we have small regional branches, our team members are used to working independently, but we could have never foreseen something of this magnitude hitting our business, and others.

We understand that consumers or businesses we are collecting from may be experiencing financial difficulty if they are being told they cannot work or places of business are closed temporarily – we will continue to represent your interests while being compassionate and fair with the consumers that we are contacting.

We also understand that while we were able to transition to remote work in less than two weeks, not every company is so fortunate, and some of our clients are trying to reinvent themselves as well.  We understand, and we’ll work with them and whatever their contingency plan is as best we can.

The other thing to remember as well, people are nervous.  Every day the government changes the rules, and more and more changes are being made to move us away from ‘normal’ to a way we can save lives and stop the spread of the virus.  It’s okay to be worried, it’s okay to not know what’s going to happen, and just take it one day at a time.

Obviously, our company working remotely means a delay in face-to-face communications or decisions in our office that we now need to schedule video or conference calls, use our internal messaging service, or internal email between team members – if we are a little slower to respond to your requests, please bear with us.  We’re trying to figure out a new ‘normal’ for our culture, and getting work done, outside of making collection calls.  We’d love to live in a paperless society, but cheques are still mailed, licenses and agreements still need signing, and we are moving as quickly as we can to get things done.  Also, working from home is a challenge for everyone – there are distractions, there aren’t co-workers to socialize with next to you, there is new technology to connect to networks and phone systems, and it can be very daunting.

The important thing, through all of this, is we stay compassionate to the people we are calling.  Some introverts or IT professionals who work from home are experiencing very little change, others who depend on family gatherings, church socials, sporting events, a bustling work environment, or face-to-face gatherings have had their world turned upside down – and it’s going to be turned upside down for weeks, maybe even months.

We also want to be compassionate to our team members – other collection agencies have closed their doors temporarily, and we want to avoid that.  We want to be consistent and reliable for our people, as much as possible.

We don’t want to bombard all our clients with emails every time our COVID-19 contingency plan changes.  We will update our company website page (https://kingstondc.com/covid-19) as our operations change, to keep you informed please visit it as you need to know what is happening.  If you have a question regarding your specific portfolio or situation, please email us at hr@kingstondc.com.

 

Hang in there folks, we will get through this, one day at a time.  In the meantime, reach out to a colleague, a family member, a friend, and tell them you are thinking of them, and let's keep everyone as safe as possible.

Blair DeMarco-Wettlaufer

KINGSTON Data & Credit
Cambridge, ON
226-946-1730
bwettlaufer@kingstondc.com