Our Guest Speakers at the ZOOM meeting on 16 June were President elect Sue Voss and Secretary Pauline McFarlane.
While the topic had been set as "how COVID-19 has affected us", Sue indicated that she had enough of Coronavirus and instead she would be talking about her work and interests.
Sue is a partner with Craig Robinson in the Mt Eliza Accounting firm Robinson Voss.
Prior to establishing her current firm, Sue had worked as an accountant for twenty years.
These days she concentrates on taxation strategy and self managed superannuation. Sue has also qualified as a financial planner.
At Robinson Voss there is a team of eight. The firm, which has members from their 20s through to late 50s, has concentrated on team building and having fun at work. The company has taken the staff to the Gold Coast and has had team events at the football and skiing weekends.
Robinson Voss has a strong commitment to the community and each staff member is encouraged to undertake some form of community activity.
Sue has been married to Carl for 31 years and she has two children and one grandchild.
Sue's grandparents and parents have lived in the Frankston area for many years with her grandparents coming to the area just after World War 2.
She is very active with her hobbies including trekking (including Kokoda, Machu Picchu and Mount Kilimanjaro) .
Sue looks forward to her year as President of the Rotary Club of Mt Eliza.
Pauline told us that in mid March she was working in her office as per usual when in the afternoon, all the office staff were called to a meeting – they were all updated on the status of Covid-19 and those of them that could, were
advised to pack their things, take everything that they would require to work from home and get out of there.
Everyone was advised to apply to JobKeeper as there was no guarantee as to what the future would hold beyond and during Covid.
Pauline worked from home for approximately 10 weeks and handled it quite well. She had her mail specially collected from her P.O. Box and other paperwork from the Company was supplied to her via a special courier – paperwork and mail being distributed quite efficiently.
It is now many weeks later and the novelty has worn off – Covid restrictions have been decreased, so Pauline has reclaimed the key to her P.O. Box, collects her own mail and delivers Company mail to the office when necessary. There is no longer a requirement for a special courier to do this and it gets Pauline out of the house.
Pauline is a people person and she does so miss the comradery in the office and working from home just is not the same.
Due to the restrictions being decreased, others working from home have gone back to work in the office again and Pauline's work load has decreased as the other staff have slowly taken over most of her work and yes you guessed it!
Her employer – her son – who purchased the business from her in 2004 - has been trying to get Pauline to retire for approximately 18 months now, to start having more time to herself and family – well! It has finally happened!
All good though!! Now is the time to move forward, enjoy life a little more, get out and about.
Who knows what the future holds?? Exciting times are ahead!!
Yes! Pauline's life has most certainly changed!!
