Comment / Get back

In January, I wrote a blog introducing the association’s new free membership offer to bands 2 to 6 staff. Nearly 1,200 finance staff have taken up the offer. That means we only have 2,200 to go to meet my own target of doubling our membership.

I’d like to give a big shout out to one organisation in the south, which enrolled 124 staff into membership with a dedicated campaign to enlist as many in that group as they could.

So how do we develop a range of services to cater for this group? I’d love to hear from any of our new members.

I shared the issue of band 2 to 6 engagement with our branch chairs a few weeks ago and they are involved in meeting those needs. The branch committee members are an amazing group who have kept the HFMA on the road locally over the past two years.

I recently attended the Eastern Branch conference, the first branch conference of 2022. Apart from the usual Covid restrictions, it felt very much like life coming back to normal.

What is the ‘new normal’? How will the business of the association be transacted in future? Here’s where we are with our thinking. Virtual meetings and webinars will continue to play a role, but our view is that to justify travelling to an event or a meeting in the future it will need to be ‘important enough’.  

There are benefits to getting on a train to go to an event miles away. The most obvious is meeting informally with colleagues and being able to look them in the eye away from the pressures of work. The annual conference falls immediately into that category (advance tickets now available), though it also does well online and enables far wider participation from the broader finance family.

But something extra happens when people come together to create and develop. Watching the Beatles documentary Get back showed them developing their legendary songs in the studio. While we cannot all be ‘fab four’-like in our creativity, we should not underestimate what we can achieve in the company of others.

Many of our committees will probably continue virtually, but we hope to get them into London occasionally.

However, it will need to be ‘important enough’, so we’re thinking of what else we can co-locate alongside such in-person meetings. 

There are a few events that are vital to the service, but may not be ‘important enough’ to justify travelling. Pre-accounts planning is a business-like event and a vital part of the pre-accounts calendar. But it will probably remain a virtual event.

However, you can’t run a confidential meeting online and panel discussions do not work as well as those held in a room. So for future hybrid events, there may be ‘chunks’ excluded from the online offering, with only those in the room able to benefit.

What we do know is that we are starting a gradual return to running live events. And we recognise that we need to find the right balance to meet members’ needs. I am certain the association’s business is ‘important enough’ for you occasionally to travel to a location. We are, of course, very grateful for all your support as we move forward to ‘re-imagine the future’.