Message from the top: Hisham Farouk, UAE CEO, Grant Thornton

Agility and responsiveness have always been an essential part of our firm’s DNA.

With that mindset, we have transitioned seamlessly and in stages, starting with prioritising our people’s health and safety, while ensuring that our client commitments are not disrupted.

Technology plays a key role in how we operate, and we have been able to leverage our tech infrastructure to ensure all our 350 team members are connected to various communication platforms. Connectivity and communication remain a constant norm between our teams and clients. Scenario planning is something that we help our clients with, and now we are applying it to our own organisation by asking the difficult questions to prepare for these uncertain times. Any decision made by businesses must be examined through the lens of social responsibility.

This outbreak is a global phenomenon, and despite its repercussions, it has brought communities and businesses closer than ever before. Businesses are created for people: those keen to achieve short-term survival by compromising their values and communities may have a price to pay later on. The world may have slowed down, but transactions have not come to a complete halt. Both people and businesses have focused their spending towards those entities that are communicative, accessible and take part in rebuilding the economy.

This approach is the new norm and will continue to be so even after the dust settles.  If businesses are not safeguarding their communities or providing value to the market, now would be the right time for them to take on a proactive approach by reviewing their strategies, fine-tuning them to the current climate, and finding new ways to evolve.

This crisis has been a learning curve for everyone, and it is only with true collaboration and resilience that we can come out from the other side with an unmatched competitive advantage and growth – which I’m sure we will.