How Treasury Teams are Adapting to Remote Working with Kemi Bolarin & Anthony Mercer

Foreign.

Welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where each and every week I talk to treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Slightly different one this week did a great session with Treasury360 for their Oslo event earlier on in the year. Loved it. It was really great. I had wonderful. Kemi Balarin, Anthony Mercer, two amazing treasury professionals. I'll introduce them in the episode shortly so you hear about them. What we wanted to do on the panel session that I hosted and they were incredible guests and you'll hear some of the learnings, if you like. They've had over this past year. About the topic, if you like, was about the new ways of working, you know, embracing flexible versus 100% coming back into the office, what it means for the world of treasury as we move forward. And there are the different approaches, if you like, to returning post pandemic. We also do this, I would say in our. You're here in our salary survey, a lot of people can take part in it. Go to treasurysalary.com one of the sections we ask at the end of that is what about returning from work, working from home, you know, what are you doing, you guys out there doing now in the world of treasury, what do you want to do, what your companies want to do? So go to treasurysalary.com, take part there. Be really good information for you guys. But as always, that's it. Let's get on with the show. So welcome to today's session. Want to say hello to everyone at Treasury360 and thanks for allowing us to do this session with you guys. What we're going to focus on today is, well, post pandemic, working from home, flexible working. What's the world going to be like from here on and what do we think about it as well? And I've got two amazing treasurers with me today. Firstly, I'd like to introduce Kemi Balarin. Lovely Kemi, who I've known for many years, is now recently become the Director of Treasury at GTT Telecom. I'll get to do a short intro about what GTTR in a moment. And we've got the lovely Anthony Mercer, work for a number of blue chips, treasury consulting at the moment. But, you know, we've got GSK Smiths and most recently STA Travel. So again, he can do a little intro there from his lovely beautiful background there and another virtual background. As we all get used to the world of virtual, you know, we'll go through it, but joking aside. Well, actually we'll go through, go around the Group. Firstly, I'll get Kebbi to do a little intro. Anthony, dude will come back to me and you know me, I run the treasury recruitment company, recruit you guys globally. If you need a new job, call us. You knew it's a recruit, call us. There you go, that was easy. Nice sales pitch. But joking aside, Kemi, let's go to you first. Can you just explain your background briefly and go from there?

Yes, thank you Mike. And yes, I've known Mike for so many, many years. He got me a job how many years ago? About 20 odd years ago, but there you go. And yeah, my name is Kemi. As Mike has said, 25 years in the treasury world. I love it and I still love it. Recently I started with GTT Communications as Director of Treasury. Again, I wasn't expecting it, the benefits of lockdown as it is. So GTT Communications is a multinational telecommunications and Internet service provider. They're headquartered in Virginia and they operate what you call the Tier one IP network, sort of deep sea water fiber cables. They also provide transport and infrastructure, data centers, Internet, quite essential services as we all navigate the pandemic. And all working from home, remote working. We definitely need the infrastructure to get us going and get us connected. So that's me in a snapshot.

You guys were the ones that kept us all talking. Fantastic, thank you very much for that. Thanks for your contribution. Keep up the good work. Mr. Mercer, over to you. Just a brief background of you if you would.

Oh, pleasure to be with you all today. So I like Femi. I've been in treasury for quite a few years now. It's about 20 years in Treasury. I started with GSK back in 1999 in their treasury team as a Treasury dealer and worked in a number of roles with them through managing different FX and investment and debt portfolios for them before moving into a middle office role. And then from fta I spent some time at Smith's Group, which was another international blue chip, as Mike mentioned, across many continents, involved in oil exploration, IT infrastructure, airplanes, lots of, lots of quite exciting engineering and technical stuff. And then just latterly up until last summer, I was with SGA Travel for about eight years, a role that Mike got me. And I was a finance director with them in charge of the financial services and treasury team. So that managed a team of 80 across three locations, including a Treasury team that was split across three locations. And just recently I've moved into some treasury consultants supporting a number of medium and small sized businesses to look at their financial team structures and think about risk Portfolio and risk management and working with a couple of startups, helping them doing their five year business plans for presentation to VC and pe. But as ever, you know, talking to Mike at the moment. So hopefully there'll be something new on the horizon.

Well, we'll keep talking, we'll keep talking. Let's think back and you know, a lot of people are sort of trying to forget about what it was like, but last February, everyone's talking about maybe flexible working. It's, you know, maybe we'll do a day from home a week and, or maybe a bit of a Friday afternoon, something like that, and they're all having a chat, that's fine. And then we're, you know, the worst April joke, April Fool's joke ever happened. And you know, two months later everyone's working from their living rooms or kitchens or bedrooms. You know, how did you each, you know, forgetting or putting to one side the businesses because can be you a different business then as well. But, you know, what did you see the impact of Treasury? And then what we'll do is we'll go through for the two of you and then we'll sort of probably also come, you know, maybe combine it if it's the right time about the businesses, particularly with Anthony, it was, you know, with a travel company. So that was, you know, really hitting you guys hard as much as anything, but, you know, more just, you know, did you. How did you see this happening? How did it affect you then? And what we'll then do is about the, you know, we'll get to the end of that and then focus on the future because that's what people watching today will be thinking. Yeah, we were there. What were your personal experiences? So, Cami, first of all, thank you, Mike.

As it was, yes, completely unprecedented for us. We actually broke up earlier, I think a week earlier than the whole nation did. And just within that sort of week we were. I mean, naturally you find that treasury teams are small, right. So you've got fewer members compared to other more sizable finance functions. So quite nimble to get together and have a protocol in place. For us it was about how can we replicate our sort of physical work at home, working in different areas remotely. So we came across, you know, we did set up a protocol around daily check in, just so that we replicate that around sort of the coffee room chat. We will then set the day's priority around what we're going to do. And most importantly, I think for us, the four of our thoughts was around connecting, continuing that sort of human connection with Our colleagues, I mean, very, very strange times. I think immediately you could tell there was a distinction between those that were techie savvy and the ones that weren't techie savvy within the company as well, you could see the RAID for infrastructure around cables, the ones that know the HDMI cables to go for laptop monitors. It was just incredible. It was like a tsunami of equipment. I mean, again, these are things that you don't even think about. So, again, it was the quickest person, got the best of the equipment. But then fast forwarding to the first week at home, it did feel strange. But for most of us, particularly my personal experience was the fact that, oh, I could save two hours of commuting to work would usually take me about 2 hours to 2 hours fro. So for me that was a benefit and I was excited about that. But as we continued into the pandemic and it looked like it wasn't going to be a month, it wasn't going to be three months, it wasn't going to be half a year, it was going to be a year, then the novelty of it started to wear out. And that was where I started to observe the sort of the blurred line between life and work. For me, it was just coming downstairs and my working hours became longer. What I then found out personally is the fact that I had to personally reset. We had to also reset within the group, ensuring that we had a sort of regular interaction with our colleagues, touching base, ensuring that they weren't due many hours. I mean, if I logged on and found that my direct report was still on, I was immediately getting on the phone to her to say, you need to really shut it down. What are we doing? I mean, for me, I must say that enjoyed is not the right word to use, but in a way, I think the transition was a welcome transition, a transition that enabled us actually come to the conclusion that actually you can work remotely and be efficient, you can work remotely and still achieve your goals. We just had to be more organized, we had to be more structured, we had to be more disciplined in the way that we delivered our deliverables. Within the treasury team being custodians of business assets as well as business information, it meant that cybersecurity was very important for us. So we had a very good conversation around what sort of protocols could we put in place to ensure that we're delivering our treasury value in a safe and a secure manner. So, in terms of the cybersecurity, any payments that were upcycle, payments that were not going to Directly from the ERP straight to the back end of the bank. We made sure that we implemented a protocol around approving that process. So we did a video, so it had to be a video approval. So again it was about adapting the way we worked, leaving the traditional ways behind, ensuring that we were connected through our daily check in on a day to day basis, being aware of our sort of mental state, our emotional well being as well, and ensuring that no one was overburdened with too much work. No one is over zoomed. You know, with this sort of zoomed, everyone's over meetings.

Yeah, we're on zoom now. We're over zoomed. You know, I felt bad. I wanted to send you some gifts to say sorry, we're gonna go.

But.

We'Ve got no choice in that now. I'm going to come back. The personal side of things. We talked to work side. You had lots of great work stuff there. Yeah, I don't want to talk about that in a minute. I want to talk about the personal side and things like that. We're going to go to Anthony, so we're going to focus there on the work side of things and then we're going to come back to Kemi because I want to talk. Yeah, we've got efficiency, but have we got collaboration? And I'll bring out a couple of examples, some of the podcasts. Anthony, going to you. Let's talk about the work side of things. You know, again, February, ticking along, da da da, boom.

So I was slightly ahead of the curve on this. I mean mainly because we had a Chinese division and that had pretty much ceased trading towards the end of December, middle of January, things have been slightly ahead of pace in China and it meant that we'd already started to see movements across cities slow down. A lot of travel within China at that point in time was very within China and China to other parts of Asia and already we'd seen Chinese activity come back a wee bit. But also I was quite fortunate in that SJA travel where I worked at the time, the role I had baked into my contract was split location. So I spent two days a week at home and three days a week in the office and I also spent one to two weeks on the road each month. So, you know, at our shared service center in Romania or our shared service center in Manchester, there was a lot of moving around anyway and because of that was fortunate in that I had a lot of equipment at home, was also used to working on the fly. Again, I was very fortunate that I drove into the Office in central London every day and parked in central London. And that hour commute that I had each day, like yourself, Kemi, that was when I ran those scrums anyway. So every morning it was two or three calls in the car with the different teams around the world, even before the pandemic hit. But then once the pandemic hit, the focus completely changed. Treasury always has, I think, a really important position to play in any company. And there's a prominent. And imports to being a treasurer and being able to communicate risk clearly to all the stakeholders within a business at this point in time. As things really settled, end of February into March and we started to move all the teams remotely, there was a lot of challenges, as you said, around moving people to that remote, working, getting them to have their equipment at home, particularly teams who didn't have laptops. You don't know how many courier services I arranged across March to move seats, desks, stacks, desktops, all out to people's homes and make sure everybody had a headset, which is a strange thing to say. A lot of our teams weren't on the phone very often, so it was getting them headsets and all that kind of stuff as well. But it was also for us, STA Travel had a lot of young people, so I think the average age of our workers was mid-20s. And a lot of those people lived at home with their parents. So, you know, it was then a case of how do you get somebody to work safely from home? It's not just getting them to work from home, but getting to a place where they can work safely from home. So, you know, to a lot of what you talked about, collaboration is really important. And, you know, we had teams and we had other bits and pieces that we use for that already. But a really important thing that happened very quickly around that February March time was bringing together what we called a war room, a war room of key stakeholders within the business. And I think the entire business used the phrase cash burn more often than any other phrase over that whole pandemic. You would have thought Covid would be the most common phrase, but actually cash burn was. And as a war room group, as an executive team, we had to really focus on what are we spending every penny on and why are we spending it on that? And is there any way for us to avoid spending that money? Because really, like every other company, particularly in the hospitality section, we were no longer selling. So all we had was expense. We had nothing coming in the door anymore. And actually we had the double whammy of your spending on shops and people who can't do what they're there to do. But also you've got to refund all your customers or you've got to refund as many customers as you can. So, you know, the cash burn was quite intense for pretty much the first three to four months. And then things changed and, you know, unfortunately ST Travel was a business that didn't qualify for much of the government support loans. We were lucky enough to qualify for furlough in many countries, but there was no government support loans that we could access. So as an executive team, again looking at our investor base, going to them and talking to them about, again, that phrase, cash burn, this is the risk, this is what's impacting their business. This is what we're going to need from you to fund us for the next 12 to 18 months. As somebody who's been steeped in travel, as Mike said for the last eight years, most countries are not going to open their borders to international travel until June or July of 2022. So that's a lot, a long time for that industry to wait for some recovery.

So let's focus a little bit more on the relationships then and then perhaps internally just to qualify as well, you know, as a recruitment business here I've just been making some notes, you know, we're all about our relationships and they didn't get put on hold. But the fact was, you know, I love seeing you both for coffee or a drink and catch up about your careers and else. And for us as a business, it got paused. You know, literally the pause button is like, well, we're not going to recruit for March, April, May. Nobody's going to move jobs in a pandemic. Why would you? There was a little bit of operational stuff, but, you know, we got through it. We had some very good international clients, but that was the external bit of the business, you know, where we're talking to people about recruitment per se and, you know, again, I'm not going to make it a sales pitch. What, what I did find is certainly in my head. I had to get around new ways of working. My colleague Carly, she now is based, certainly for the time being, still working from home and actually just as anti put, we had everything in place, you know, so we, we Skype, we zoom, we do whatever we have to. But actually, you know, I'm looking forward to seeing her for a coffee and actually a bit of face to face and things like that. But one thing I noticed here, and I just scribbled it down here is who was looking after you guys? Obviously you were looking after your teams, you know, looking after them. And Kemi, you mentioned about, you know, getting together and connecting. How were their personal lives and things? You know, without prying too much, were your CFOs asking you the same, you know, were they asking, you know, how are you getting on and things like that. And in a minute I'll change the order because I don't feel it's fair to always pick on Kemi. Ash, let's keep doing it. But no Kemi, how were you getting through that? You know, was there mindfulness? Was there other stuff? You know, how were you and, you know, how did it work for you?

It was very, pretty much. So, I mean, we had a situation where our CFO was a very people. Well, very people led person. I mean, that would be the first question, you know, for any of the Zoom teams meeting that we had is how are you guys holding up? I mean, the good thing about this sort of the Zoom, the team meetings is the fact that you get to see people as people. They start to see the cats, you know, walk across the laptop, the kids that come to perch on mommy's legs or daddy's legs, what have you, you know, somebody. The partner making coffee, you know, behind the camera somewhere. So there was a lot of. I think that was one bit that got highlighted for me in as much as yes, we take for granted the sort of impromptu tearoom conversation that was quickly replicated within our team meetings. I think I'm lucky enough to say that I worked for very good, caring group of people, whereby the meetings were actually the startup for any meeting. Is how you guys holding up? Are you guys bearing well, you know, what's your situation like, particularly for people that were living alone? Because you could see that almost immediately because you have that sense of isolation, sometimes you have that sense of being disconnected. For me personally, I felt like I was looked after by my leaders in that they would always ask that question and it was genuine. It was in a tick box exercise. It would be, kemi, how are you holding on? I mean, they will soon hear me talk to my daughter across the wall anyway, you know, and say, oh, okay, yeah, Kenny, we heard that.

Get off the Internet.

Exactly. How is the study going? Yes, that was a very good discussion as well. How is the study going on? So. And as that was happening to me, I was able to pass that down to my team as well. It's about being emotionally aware, is about, you know, connecting with the people's wellbeing. And their mental state, very, very important. And that was key for us at Travelport.

And I'm going to look towards the future as well in a second, but. And we'll double ask you the question anti as you come on, it's time to get your own back because Kemi's had all them. So, you know, again, you were talking about, then talking to all of your teams in each of the locations and things. Did you know prior to this it was all about, you know, the practical treasury business, business of treasury, but was that. I know, you know, we are friends and stuff and, you know, so you've got a very warm personality. You're going out there and talking to those guys. Did that change, though, even more that you had to become more of a friend to your teams or how did you guys cope?

I think it's a really good question. I mean, people management is one of the hardest skills to learn and getting that balance right between being a manager or a leader and being a colleague or a friend, it's a difficult thing. I think it's one of the hardest skills we all have to work at and we all have to keep working at. During that initial spring and early summer when things were tight here in the uk, in particular with the lockdowns in the UK and everyone having to work remotely and also having to make hard decisions about who you kept in the team and who you put on furlough and then trying to explain to those teams why you've made those decisions. They were some of the hardest times I think I've had in my career so far, and particularly to the point where in some countries where we couldn't qualify for that support, actually having to have conversations with people in the middle of a pandemic that you're letting them go. These were difficult times and these were some really hard conversations. But as much as you can, or as much as I could, as much as I can, I've always tried to keep a respectful distance as well as being a leader and I try not to be too much of a friend to the people who work in the teams I work in, because you always have to have a little bit of distance. But what I think I learned during the pandemic was you do have to take a little bit more interest in people. We had a really good focus in the teams at the time, around, to Kemi's point, around mental health and particularly around people who were in slightly more difficult situations working remotely. You know, I mean, I have a. I have three young children and a fantastic wife and, you know, she took the vast line of the work that was done when they were having to be taught from home. And I'm incredibly lucky that I was in that position. But I was also incredibly conscious. Not everybody I worked with and everybody who worked for me was as fortunate as me at that time. And because of that, you had to learn to adapt to those individual circumstances. But it did stretch the deck. It really did stretch the day. So, you know, when you were having those contact points and starting to talk each day about what are our priorities, what do we need to focus on, what data do we need to produce or which financial partners do we need to talk to, you had to work out how you piece the day around those other pressures that people had. And you had to bend a little, because if we didn't bend a little, we were all going to break.

Yeah.

And I think that was one of the tough parts of working during the pandemic, actually.

And I'm going to move on in a minute. A short while before we reach the end of today's session to, you know, as the future and what it looks like and this, you know, new way of working, new blended hybrid, whatever way you want to call it. But before we do that, I'm just going to come back to something for both of you and ask Anthony first and then, you know, Kemi can copy some of your answers. That's fine.

You carry on.

It's always good, that blurring line of homeworking. And, you know, I know that one of my friends was a treasurer and he. He basically went out, forced himself to go out for a lunch, walk him, the dog, his wife, every lunchtime, that was it. And he switched off his phone. Well, left his phone at home. He just said, just no, you know, and he got used to that, had to do that. And this blurred home life. You know, I've got some of the notes here. You know, I did it on act panel. The commute from, you know, previously, getting on the train, you'd had an hour, you know, traveling, got your head into the workspace and then an hour back and you were, yeah, you might be on the train, might be driving, but, you know, you might be then reading a book, you might be Netflix, you might be doing whatever. Suddenly it stopped. You know, you had this, you know, 8 o' clock, switch on your piece. Oh, actually, it's gotta get on. Get on with this. And suddenly, 8 o' clock, switching it off. Now, how did you, you know, did you find that difficult with that blurred line maybe, or was It a distinct line over time, or, you know, Ansley going to you first and then we'll come to yourself, Kemi, in the last.

I'd say 15 years, I've. I've been lucky and also I've been lucky to work in roles that that meant that you're managing financial relationships in Asia, in Europe and in North America at the same time. So I think most people in treasury, in international businesses, will be used to having some flexibility about how they work. Whether that's up at 4:30 in the morning to talk about to a bank in Auckland or up at 10 in the evening to talk a bank to a bank in la. You've got to manage those things around you. And I think because of that, a lot of treasurers have that skill already. But I did find that because as a family unit, everybody's in the house at the same time, you had to be a bit more flexible with that. And a lot of the partners we worked with were actually fortunate to support us in that flexibility. And I think you had to try and drive as much structure as you could into your day. That's how I found I had to work anyway. So I benefited immensely from being able to have breakfast and lunch and dinner with the whole family during lockdown, which is something I don't think I would ever have had if we hadn't gone through this. And I do count myself lucky for being able to have that experience. But at the same time, there was definitely stress points where, you know, we were, you know, we were out there trying to drum up cash to support the business or trying to renegotiate a facility that we had, and trying to do all that kind of work remotely and get all the team engaged and all the team working to the same end game at the same point in time was incredibly difficult. And I think I don't mind saying Mike, and Mike knows this. Estee Travel unfortunately did not survive the pandemic. And as directors of the business, we had to make a decision in August last year of closing that business down and moving it into liquidation. And it was incredibly hard thing to do with all the passion and energy and support that everyone had poured into it. But it was also the right decision to make. And I think that stuff that has gone on during this pandemic, that I will never learn again, as much as I've learned during this time. And it's looking for the positives in this as much as all those hard things we all went through.

Kemi, over to you follow that brilliant word. Sorry, that Makes a nice change. He stunned me into silence for a change. Mr. Mercer. Bloody hell. You were so intelligent. Jesus. Come on.

Follow.

Good luck.

Yes, it's everything. Yeah. I'll just say that everything that Anthony said, plus, you know, more, I mean, in terms of. Yes, I mean the novelty of working from home. It took me about two weeks to then suddenly realize that, oh yeah, I needed to put structure in place and that was really needed because the first two weeks we were busy trying to replicate our work life, you know, making sure that we had everything going. Also my mindset was a mindset of visibility. I wanted my leaders to feel like, oh yeah, I was there, I was present. But then by the end of two weeks, I needed to change that round because I just needed that structure. I knew something was missing. Getting up in morning, driving to work, coming back was a bit of structure and I needed to replicate that. So then what did I do was clear. Created very clear space around work, creating very clear space around life. And also I took on walking as well. So I would, as soon as it's 5pm, if there's nothing to do, there's nothing urgent to do, I would go out for a very long walk. And that brought sanity back. And it's the same thing with my family. For kids. I had two, I've got two kids, 16 and 18. And again, it was a different way of working for them, also ensuring that they had a safe space for their homeschooling. So it was pretty much adapting to new ways of working, making sure that the mindset is nourished, making sure that the mental well being is nurtured, staying organized, staying in control. So I took on all kinds. I mean, I think I said Mike, in one of my other sort of talking engagements where I mentioned that I took on minimum 30 minutes of topping up on my skills using LinkedIn learning. Again, I wouldn't have done that in sort of the hustle and bustle of driving to work and coming back. So very good experience, although it took a while to get used to it. But I must say that it's given me a very, very good family time. You know, being able to have dinner together, as Anthony has said, being able to even prepare our meals, you know, think about the meals and make it a worthy experience for the family at the end of each day.

Yeah. Now, as we come towards the end of today's session and what I'll do, we will put your details in the show notes. So we've got a couple more questions and things and again we'll come to Anthony first on this one. But, but what I want to do is look at coming out of the pandemic and now what the new world is going to look like and the new world of work. So we'll ask that to both of you and then, you know, we'll just wrap up with your, you know, perhaps couple of final tips, you know, so you can sort of think about those, maybe reflect on, you know, for people watching today, what they should think about as they come out of it. Before I do that with you, Anthony, and about this sort of, I want to focus then on sort of, you know, we handle some of the notes actually about, you know, the world of treasury, where does it go to and stuff. I'm less bothered about that really. You know, everyone's here is, you know, is treasury professionals watching today potentially. But it's more about work life, you know, you know, you know, or work, you know, the future of work, not life so much. You know, how it fits in. But we were just talking before this session today that I've got a future podcast coming up with a guest. He's a treasurer I spoke to, known well, very well. And he thinks that, you know, be a great podcast because he thinks that this working from home, flexible working is a fallacy. You know, his thoughts are we're going to return to, you know, at some stage, you know, renegotiating rents, but, you know, have offices again. Everyone's going to be commuting every day. I don't potentially agree with that wholeheartedly. I think there was a mixed way and things have evolved and we talked about that as a group before. So reflecting maybe back on that or back to you, Anthony, what would you say you see it as going from here?

I think instinctively, I think it's going to be a blend. I think certain institutions are already saying quite vocally in the market that they want their teams back in the office and they don't, they don't want to support remote working. And I can see benefits of that. I can also see some weaknesses to that in that it might be that they're less attractive to certain types of, of future employees. And I just, I mean, my personal view is that businesses need to evolve with the workforce and part of that workforce need is going to be a want to focus a little bit on work life balance. I think we'd already seen that pre pandemic. I think when you talk to a lot of millennials and Gen Z, there's a lot of what they're looking for in terms of reward, in terms of recuperation and the whole package. And how they want to live their lives is very different to how I wanted them to live my life when I 22, 23, straight out of uni. And I think we just need to acknowledge that. I think part of that as leaders in any industry, is going to be listening to your workforce and getting the balance right between the direction you want to take your business in and how you want to optimize the workforce to facilitate that. And that all sounds a little bit jingoistic and a little bit, you know, business bollocks. Want a better phrase? But I do think we have to take our time and think about what we want. I personally think it'll be a blend. You know, all the, all the teams that I'm talking to at the moment in different. In different places, they are seeing this as an opportunity to cut one of their biggest costs. You know, rent and overheads is a massive cost and people are, you know, one project I've recently worked on with somebody was around remuneration and how they slightly adjust people's salaries to allow for more remote working and adjusting it so that they're not paying themselves for mobile phone bills or for Internet. But there's a slight uptick in people's salaries so that it covers those costs. And the trade off for that business is it will be able to potentially exit three office locations in major UK cities and potentially relocate to one west country location instead as a more flexible working space. Now, that's going to give significant savings on people's balance sheet and there's a lot of complexity around IFRS, 16 and lease accounting now anyway, so if you can simplify all that anyway, you know, there's lots of soft benefits that come through as well as making savings on that space. But personally, I don't think the profile of cities is going to change massively. It will shift, but I think it's going to be a blended approach going forward. Well, at least that's my view.

Again, Kemi, before we wrap up today and we do the sort of. I've got a couple of other bits, but I'm going to come to you. What are your thoughts?

I mean, same as Anthony has said, it will be a hybrid and I think the workforce is. Will probably shape what then becomes the future of the workspace. Already in a recently reported newspaper, they're talking about FTSE 100 companies looking at flexible work plans. I mean, it goes without saying that the pandemic has changed our mindset. It's actually shown businesses that it can be done. During the pandemic we had in my company, we had two major finances and we did all this sort of credit agreement negotiation over zoom and Microsoft Teams pre pandemic, it probably wouldn't have been thought of. So the issue is just giving employees that opportunity to choose, opportunity to shape their work life the way they deem suitable. I mean, yes, for me I would embrace flexibility. Probably it's going to be three days working in the office and then two days working from home. Again, the key word here is flexibility. For a lot of the companies looking to shared office space as well, I think that's where the challenge will be. Because if we're saying it's flexible and that we're giving employees the opportunity to choose, then it becomes unstructured. So it would be quite a challenge to determine how much office space is redundant and actually be let go and then give you back some money onto your balance sheet. So again, it's about the flexibility, it's about giving us the opportunity to choose. There will be a very good mix there and I think ultimately the quest for well being and sort of the mental wellness will probably drive us back more into the office space because you just welcome that sort of social and human interaction with colleagues away from your sort of family life. But that's also my own personal opinion.

There's one interesting thing you said there can be for me, which I think is actually quite important. You know, you did two successful funding rounds during the pandemic and so much of a treasurer's work is maintaining not only internal but those external relationships as well. Yes, for me it was surprising how quickly we all adapted to managing those external relationships. And I really can't wait, as Mike said earlier, for that point when I sit down with my banker and have a cup of coffee or even have a lovely lunch somewhere. We're all missing nice lunches somewhere. But I do think there's a lot of success to be looked at during this and you can't in any industry, you can never look at something that you manage to adapt and make a success of and just say, well, now that the clock's gone back 18 months, let's forget all that. You've got to take those learnings forwards. And I agree with everything you've just said. I think we're going to take those learnings forwards.

It's also interesting for me we do a lot and our US business is growing rapidly and actually I'm just about to recruit a role that's 100% remote based on the East coast, you know, just been doing some work on it today and it's an interesting, you know, role there. And the person, you know, won't. We'll never have a fixed office. But then, you know, when with some of my west coast clients, I've spoken to them and they're saying, yeah, it's great, we can do remote and everything else and we save on these offices, particularly in the Silicon Valley, you know, which are extortionately expensive and things like that. Exactly there. The thing about that is, is how much does that go into the. The coffers of the company per se and how much are you going to pay to your stuff? Because they're going. Well, actually, before we were having to pay $200,000 for this person. Now, if they're working for remote, remotely nearby us, you know, maybe, you know, it's, you know, another location, you know, it's over in Utah or something. Low, much lower cost base. Well, it's all right. We can get that $200,000 person for $150,000. They can work remotely. We make the saving. Hang on, shouldn't you up the price, you know, maybe meet in the middle 175. I'm just giving those as example numbers, but I think there is a sort of a pushback from both sides. Well, hang on, I'm still worth that 200. Yeah, I was spending half my salary on cost of living, so I think that's. It's less so perhaps in UK and Europe, but I think there is a, you know, there's that and there's more to go with that. Now I'm going to go Kemi and then Anthony on this. You know, I'd like your closing pieces of advice if I could, because it's been a brilliant session. I love the advice there. You know, what would you say? Just like I do on my podcast, we will put on the. Your LinkedIn profile and the show notes so people can look at your backgrounds and things like that. In this case, as people are looking at this new way, this new blended way of working. We've talked about that. We've got some great advice from Anti, but some of his international teams and Kemi, you were talking about, you know, really supportive CFOs and everything else, but what advice would you, each of you give to the treasury professionals looking today if they're, you know, junior guys and, you know, trying to balance their lives, or if they're senior treasury professionals and managing their teams? You've been both and Seen both from the front line, you know, what sort of nuggets of advice would you give to those guys? Kemi, first of all, thank you.

I mean, for me, it's been in the moment is actually understanding what is life asking of you? What is your work asking of you? As somebody said in one of your podcasts, Mike, you know, work should actually give you energy and not drain your energy. I mean, working remotely sometimes can be draining, as some people think it's comforting, but we just need to be present in the moment, understand what are the positives from actually remote working. What is the positive of social and human interaction? I think the pandemic has actually highlighted the importance of coming out to have that coffee with you, Mike, rather than roll the eyes and say, oh, my God, you know, I don't have.

Sorry, no, I've had enough coffees this pandemic. All right. Anyway, sorry. Sorry to interrupt, but, yeah, glass of wine or beer? Social time, I love. You know, I often make the joke with treasurers. You know, you guys are the first of the bar and most the last to leave it, which is my kind of people. But it's a collaborative. It's, you know, social.

Collaborative, yes, it's social and you begin to add value to it now because we've all missed it in the last one year. And it's mainly because, you know, that was taken away from us. So it's been in the moment, actually. Appreciate it. Appreciate where we are at the moment. Understand, you know, what is your work life, what is your after work life? It is interrelated, it is interconnected. You can't draw a line in the sand, but I think it's just understanding the importance of each experience in our lives, owning, understanding and appreciating the benefit of it.

Anthony, follow that, mate. Good luck.

Yeah, I know. I think the only thing I'd add to what Cami said is, you know, we've all learned during the pandemic the importance of communication and communication tools. And the one communication tool we should all have in our careers, both upwards and downwards, is that one to one is that relationship you have with your immediate superior and other people and the teams who work for you. And one to one is a bidirectional conversation. It's not just you talking all the time, which is hard for me to say as I talk far too much. But, you know, we've got to. We've got to empower ourselves and we've got to empower the people who work for us to be honest with us. So you know what I learned during this exercise was to stop and listen to the issues that they're facing at home or they're facing in the office or they're facing and what they're doing and trying to understand how I can manage that. And sometimes through that two way conversation you realize it's not going to work. And then together you have to work out how you move things apart and you potentially move somebody on or somebody chooses to go. But you've got to have that conversation and the conversation has got to be bidirectional. It can't just always be you the one talking either up or down. It's got to go both ways. So be honest, be open and be clear on what you're looking for and where your pinch points are and where your stresses are. Because if they don't know it, if it all blows up, it doesn't look good for anybody. So you've got to manage your career and manage your relationships as much as you manage the people around you, as I do.

I summarize it on the podcast that's treasurycareercorner.com go there. These guys will be on there soon. They don't know yet but they will. But that podcast that was referred to as I think the one was Wade Olson did a few about 148149amazing guy. My first and only ever two part podcast but it was definitely worthwhile about it was brilliant. Yeah he's just an incredible guy. But I'm just going to go through the quick lit checklist here. So guys out there, you know, using chemie, being present in the moment, positivity, keep that in mind then owning the moment as well. Loving that piece of advice. We'll probably do this in the show notes then across to Anthony then about communication and tools and you know the need one to one openness, empowerment of those guys and it being two directional so going to them, not just you telling them but then it coming back and taking that on board. And my favorite, I've got to say and I would say this and I think actually I speak for both Anthony and I as well. Can we. Yeah, that's social. Social loads. Yeah. After work, socializing, it's all about that. It's like I say, It's a roaring 20 so.

It is.

Well as always I can't wait to see you both for a glass of wine, beer, the odd coffee, whatever.

Coffee.

Coffee, yeah. Anyway, it's been amazing. Thank you both and can't wait to see you and I Hope guys at Treasury 360 have enjoyed this today. Two amazing guests, amazing value and thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you.

It's been a pleasure.

Thanks. Hello, it's Mike here again. I hope you enjoyed this week's show. If you did, then maybe you want to follow the show or subscribe, depending on where you listen, whether that's itunes, Spotify, or another great place to listen to the show from. It's totally free and means that you'll be the first to see each and every week when we release a new show. And maybe whilst you're there, you could even leave a quick review. Reviews and ratings are among the most important metrics for a podcast to effectively rank. And as you can probably appreciate, the podcast is a lot of hard work to produce. Every week it'd be amazing. Just take, say, 20 seconds, leave a quick review of my amazing guests and their great career stories. We'd really appreciate it. Thanks very much and I can't wait to see you soon.