Finance and customs
Remote yet connected
Barthol works from the office in Wijchen and travels to Oud-Beijerland about once a month. “It’s nice to see colleagues in person, although the schedule is often too full to do it more often,” he says. The department’s daily stand-up usually happens via Teams. “Distance is no barrier to collaboration. Staying involved with the head office has become much easier with the new Speak app. You used to walk around the office; now you see everything in the app, even if your colleague is in Italy. And what you don’t catch through a screen, my manager fills in. That way, I stay perfectly informed, even from a distance.”
Deepening the scope of duties
“The growth of the company dictates what my work looks like,” Barthol continues. “More volume means more work and more colleagues. Where there used to be two of us, there are now six. It means you deepen your own scope of duties rather than broadening it. You simply can’t weigh in on everything anymore. I sometimes find that a pity, but on the other hand, it gives me satisfaction to focus fully on my own task. That also works to the customer’s advantage: the better you know a specific part of the process, the sharper and more reliably you can execute it.”