Well, hello there! How the devil are we all? Hope everyone’s 2022 has got off to a roaring start?
I didn’t do an Eclipse last week for a number of reasons, including the fact that we were at our company kick-off day. There’s a lil blog on it below, which summarises some of what went on during the day. The aim of the event was to consolidate everything that has happened in the evolution of Verve so far, and set out our goals and vision for the next stage, or Verve 2.0 as we’re calling it. There is lots to come on this…
However, a big part of holding the day was to consolidate the new team. With five new starters already just this year, we’ve more than doubled our size since we went into the pandemic, (having now breached the 70 barrier, I’ve been warned that, having hit that milestone I’ll basically now blink and discover we’re at 100 team members… eek!). A mix of so many new faces, the pandemic fatigue that was hitting us hard at the end of last year, plus the rapidly changing internal landscape meant it was essential to take the time to regroup, get everyone aligned and the newest people fully embedded.
So - circa 40 hires since lockdown first happened in March 2020. No mean feat. I say this because I’ve been asked lots about it; how we’ve found it, how we’ve approached it, how we can help others do it. Nat and I are actually running a TALK event on this next week (link below). If you’re unfamiliar, TALK involves a 10 minute online chat from one of us to share our thoughts, before breaking out into rooms to discuss your own experiences. So, I’d love to see lots of you there and sharing what has and hasn’t worked for you, along with your current recruitment challenges. We’re currently piloting how we can better support firms in this area, so the more input we get on this, the better.
Reading this morning about Google investing £730m in UK office space, as they plan to get everyone back to the office for at least 3 days a week, and having already had two firms contact us this week to help them find new team members, it feels like there’s a definite, optimistic buzz in the air about the coming year. There are many opportunities for growth and a chance to put the last couple of years - from a work perspective - completely behind us.
In finance-land we know there’s a few regulatory pieces on the horizon (discussed in my Nucleus article, also below) and my gut is telling me there’ll be a cheeky curve ball or two (based primarily on how quiet regulation has been over the last couple of years... and also as a distraction from the cost of that Christmas song 🤦🏼♀️).
So, we look ahead to this year with a huge amount of energy and enthusiasm, while being prepared for any cheeky, unexpected side swipes and stay true to our mission to empower and enable advice firms, through the many, many ideas we’ve got. I’m looking forward to working with lots of you in the coming year - drop me a line with thoughts, ideas, suggestions, or rants. Or pop them in our Verve community app, to share with your fellow finance folk.
Have a wonderful weekend all. On Sunday I officially enter the final year of my 30s, and that sounds like the kind of thing that requires a bottle of Bollinger being popped. Literally starting the year off with a bang!