- McGovern Hurley LLP is an accounting firm founded in 1980 that provides public accounting services to over 1,000 corporate and professional clients, both private and public companies, involved in all areas of business activities.
Jacinda David passionate about turning ideas into reality and driving success through efficient organization and effective systems.
I’m very excited to welcome Jacinda David, Director of Operations at accounting firm McGovern Hurley LLP, where she’s passionate about turning ideas into reality and driving success through efficient organization and effective systems, especially in the context of hybrid work. She brings a wealth of experience in turning ideas into reality and ensuring operational excellence.
Jacinda David’s journey in the accounting field began with her co-op placement at an accounting firm at McGovern Hurley. She then left to run her own family business for 16 years but stayed on as a client at McGovern Hurley. In 2020, she returned to public accounting.
Jacinda David explained that in remote work environments, mentorship is important for new or junior staff to feel supported and have someone to turn to for guidance. She shared how her firm decided on assigning buddies to new or junior staff to help open up communication lines and provide a comfortable space for asking questions.
“When your buddy is in the office and you just drop by their desk and say, ‘Hey, how do I do this?’ That feels really comfortable. But it feels like a silly question when you have to make an official meeting. So having the buddies be responsible for reaching back out to the juniors and checking on them is really important.” - Jacinda David, Director of Operations at McGovern Hurley LLP
Jacinda David explained that the team at the training office announced the intentions of returning to the office in Fall 2022 and eventually successfully rolled out a new hybrid work model in 2023. The decision to transition to a hybrid work model was delayed because the firm wanted to observe how other organizations were adapting. It was ultimately decided that a hybrid model would support the need for in-person collaboration while maintaining flexibility.
“We need to have people seeing and feeling what it's like to be an accountant, to develop your soft skills and your technical skills.” - Jacinda David, Director of Operations at McGovern Hurley LLP
The hybrid work implementation included mandating employees come in the office twice a week and offering incentives for employees to come into the office for more days, such as having a permanent desk if they worked three days a week. Jacinda David explained that leveraging a workspace management platform like Skedda has come in handy in their transition to hybrid work.
“McGovern's been really taking advantage of this hybrid model to attract staff because we offer this two days a week. People can still enjoy the flexibility they had with being able to work from home and play that off with also coming in.” - Jacinda David, Director of Operations at McGovern Hurley LLP
Jacinda David shared that the firm has seen a significant growth in staff but has managed to accommodate them without needing to move offices. The firm currently has 80 desk spaces available for its nearly 100 staff team. They have implemented a hoteling system to optimize the use of available desk spaces.
Jacinda David explained that most senior staff, partners, and directors have a permanent desk. The organization has hoteling offices that certain level senior managers can book. Managers and associates all have a workspace that’s a cubicle or a standing desk area that they book when they come in. These workstations can be booked two weeks in advance. The firm encourages staff to book in advance, especially when there’s an event to facilitate planning. For example, McGovern and Hurley uses Skedda to get a headcount of how much lunch to order for the day.
Jacinda David shared that they plan more social collaboration events when people come into the office. Certain teams tend to come on certain days—it’s not mandated. For instance, the private team comes on Tuesdays, the audit team comes on Wednesdays, and the tax team comes on Thursdays. If people know their boss will be in the office, they know it’s a good day to come and ask questions about their work. The organization also has team breakfasts that line up with those days.
Jacinda David explained that implementing a desk booking system like Skedda has been crucial for managing a hybrid work model efficiently. The rules and roles function lets them set rankings for different users in Skedda. This allows certain people to be able to book certain types of workstations, but the firm can change that if they find it works differently for different groups. By customizing the rules and conditions in Skedda, the organization has gained more control over desk bookings, allowing for a seamless transition into a flexible work environment.
Read more: Rolling Out a Desk Booking System? 3 Steps to Guarantee Adoption
“It’s great being able to customize Skedda to different needs based on when they want to allow people to book workstations. The most fun part is being able to look at everybody’s faces on top of the desks in the graphics. You feel like you’ve seen them in person even if you haven’t gotten up from your desk and walked over.” - Jacinda David, Director of Operations at McGovern Hurley LLP
Jacinda David shared that creating office neighborhoods has also been extremely helpful. This encourages people to book an area where other team members will be. Neighborhoods make it easier to ask questions and collaborate when employees are working together on a file and they’re all sitting around each other. She mentioned that the neighborhoods have developed organically and the firm has started labeling them on the map so that new employees know where to go when they first visit the office.
Jacinda David shared that they also label individual desks with people’s names to help employees put a face to the name. Coming back to the office, people hadn’t seen each other’s faces in a while and didn't necessarily know who everybody was. Now people have tags that they can put up on the wall of their desk to identify themselves. When someone walks by now, they can match the names to the faces.
“We've all come to be used to the flexibility of working from home sometimes, but the experience is definitely more beneficial when people really take advantage of it. Plan the right day to come in when it works for your team and when it works for your family and your home life.” - Jacinda David, Director of Operations at McGovern Hurley LLP
Jenny is a top Go-To-Market (GTM) leader in the Greater Boston area, where she has a track record of building powerful brands and categories, generating demand (for both sales- and product-led orgs), and creating energizing mission-driven cultures of belonging in the B2B tech space.
Jacinda David is passionate about driving success through efficient organization and effective systems. She is a dedicated professional with extensive entrepreneurial experience, a strong background in Operations Management and a deep interest in accounting.
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