The pandemic has tested my leadership. I have turned to books, mentors and friends for guidance. On a number of occasions my gut instinct was right, on others there was no clear path. The lack of control was daunting. The ‘return to the office, don’t return to the office’ scenario is one example. Knowing what is ‘the right thing to do’ isn’t easy when faced with such an impasse.

There’s the need to be empathetic to the concerns the team has about life after lockdown. I share them. Yet balance it with the huge task of navigating Brexit and more industry specific challenges like IR35, which will affect the majority of our clients in some way.

Winter may be coming but there’s no time to hibernate and resort to just keeping things ticking along and seeing what happens. We’ve got to take control of what we can while we can and build the resilience we will need.

When the announcement was made that new national and local restrictions were coming in, and that the next six months would be hard, it wasn’t wholly unexpected. But given the context of managing huge macro-economic change, I hadn’t realised how much I, and my fellow directors, would agonise over a decision such as whether to return to the office.

It seemed a tougher decision compared to most. One we needed to get right for individuals and the company.

The more I read the more conflicted things seemed. In the end we decided to strip back emotion and opinion and look at the statement for help. The government's advice is to work from home if you're effective when working from home. The word effective stood out. Did we think people were more effective in the office or at home? More importantly, did they?

A company-wide survey helped clarify things. On the whole most people said they could be and were productive at home. It helped to make a decision that home working would be the default.

However, there was a minority, less than five people, who said it wasn’t working for them and moving from bedroom to kitchen was unsustainable. They needed to come to work to be productive. To switch into the right frame of mind. So, for those that need an office the option is there. No need to plan in advance - if you need a change of scene you can take it, knowing we’ve set it up to be safe.

Ordinarily such a small number wouldn’t have dramatically affected our plans. However, this time, we were talking about 20% of our fire power feeling below par. That’s not good for all sorts of reasons.

We have always set out to be an employer that offered an innovative place to work, one where you can progress and you believe every day you contribute to something great, with like-minded people around you. A place that was fun to be. It was clear some people felt lost. We had to take responsibility and help these people achieve their ambition, as much as ours.

Coupled with this was the feedback that there were other areas to address no matter where people worked. One was related to how people organise their life. There’s the work compartment, the home compartment, the family one on so on. Working from home was blurring all of this.

Some told us that switching off in the evening was more difficult than they imagined and it was impacting their ability to be productive the next day. Others said they greatly missed people not just to discuss last night’s Great British Bake Off, but also to learn from.

You can’t become a better accountant without contact with experienced practitioners. The work we’d done towards instilling a positive mental attitude was wavering, just at the time we needed a growth mindset the most.

A couple of things became clear as we discussed the findings with the team to understand more. The first is the sense that we are in this together. We don’t have all the answers, and there will be more upheaval and change, but we can still achieve our goals when we work together. People were ready to deal with this turbulence, if we were ready to help them. Conversations stimulated ideas.

And that’s the second moment of clarity. We needed an unwritten contract if you like. One that propagates joint accountability.

We’ll provide the strategy, the support structure and the safety net to be productive if everyone takes ownership to be productive, share moments of inspiration and tell us when things are slipping. Ultimately it gives us all control of things we can have a say in while the world outside feels precarious.

Of course, time will tell as to whether this approach will pay off but the early signs are that we’ve taken positive steps in the right direction, and at a pivotal time. People, no matter where they work, are having conversations about how they can help each other unplug at night. There’s shared ownership for helping us all be our best. We’ve not cracked it yet, but switching off is accepted as a goal we all need to work on.

Most of all I see a change in the people who were doubting themselves. They are coming back to true form. Better still, effectiveness is coming back up as a result of these adjustments. The next six months looks brighter despite it all.

We still have one area to work on though, and that’s the social aspect. Weekly quizzes and so on at the start of lockdown worked but fatigue crept in and we lost momentum.

We’re now looking at the different ways other companies are achieving a team spirit at a distance. It seems there is no easy answer to this but I’m confident having got the fundamentals back on track we’ll find a solution. The team wants it and will help make it happen.

Unanimously we have decided to control what we can together so we can put effort into helping our clients control their futures and grow our business. As I say, who knows what the rest of the year and 2021 holds, there will be twists in the road, and most likely u-turns.

Yet it feels like our business has the glimmer of an open road, and that’s a great feeling to have at a time that’s far from great.

James Poyser is CEO at inniAccounts.