The COVID-19 pandemic has turned Zoom calls and virtual meetings into everyday occurrences, and no industry has been left untouched, least of all the world of conferences, seminars and other forms of continuing education. Continuing education requirements for CPAs and Enrolled Agents have not changed as a result of the pandemic. However, the method by which firms provide them has shifted to virtual sessions or online courses, according to Annie Schwab, a tax services manager at Padgett Business Services.
“Padgett recently hosted its annual tax seminar, and this year was the first time ever it was done entirely virtually,” she said. “This posed some logistical and technical challenges for the event coordination team, but it also offered some useful insights that will shape the future of the company’s conferences and training.”
These include:
- Virtual events can drive greater participation.“Since previous conferences often were held at central locations, that reduced the number of people from each office who could attend,” Schwab said. “However, a virtual setting can bring more office employees into the fold. The number of attendees for our annual tax seminar nearly doubled this year over last.”
- Organizers must be innovative to spur engagement. “Longtime conference attendees enjoy the fellowship and networking that comes with in-person attendance, and that is lost when events shift online.” she noted. “That’s why it’s crucial to take advantage of digital platforms that allow for breakout rooms and fun activities.” At Padgett’s tax seminar, digital breakout rooms were set up for office owners to visit and ask questions, a virtual photo booth allowed for themed interactions, and a vendor fair was held online.
- Attendees can realize meaningful cost savings.Virtual seminars, conferences and learning opportunities reduce the need to travel, and that means real cost savings for accounting firms. Savings on lodging, food and travel can be funneled back into the company for future investments or repurposed for additional continuing education opportunities. “For us, putting on a live conference involved booking a conference room for four to five days, providing meals to attendees, and coordination travel for staff and presenters,” Schwab recalled. “Virtual conference platforms are affordable.”
In some areas, a move toward virtual meetings had already begun prior to the coronavirus pandemic.
”We work a lot with state CPA societies, said Ed Zollars, a partner at Thomas, Zollars & Lynch, and an instructor at Kaplan Financial Education. “A lot of states in the West already have a hybrid of live plus broadcast. But for those that hadn’t yet started to do virtual sessions, the pandemic forced them to default to Zoom just to get something up quickly.”
“So far, they’ve had about the same number of attendees as usual. Those that offered combo courses have drifted away from live to remote, and the pandemic may have accelerated that trend. I haven’t done a live in-person seminar since February,” Zollars said. “This morning I did a remote seminar for Idaho. The overall trend in the industry has been toward remote sessions, and the pandemic has been more of a shove in that direction.”
“People don’t like change,” he said. “But at some point there will be a discussion as to whether it’s worth it to have the additional cost of doing it live. We’re seeing a lot more interest in presenting four-hour sessions this year. For today’s four-hour session, I had to edit it down from eight hours, and decide what not to tell them. But people that haven’t done a lot of remote learning don’t want to sit in front of a computer for even four hours.”
However, the future may be looking bleak for live seminars, Zollars indicated. “In states that do both live and remote, the live audiences are getting older and smaller,” he said. “The online audience is younger. Over time, that doesn’t bode well for live presentations.”
‘It’s easier to fall asleep’
Beanna Whitlock, of Whitlock Tax Service and former head of the IRS National Public Liaison Office, called out a generational difference in how practitioners respond. “For many, it’s tough to sit in front of a computer screen for 100 minutes,” she said. “The older folk are doing it out of necessity, but they don’t like it. They like to sit in a classroom and have break time where they can go to the instructor and ask about a client’s situation. The remote participants are increasingly younger and more tech-savvy.”
Remote meetings call for more effective speakers, according to Whitlock. “They need to be extremely dynamic,” she explained. “It’s easier to fall asleep in front of a computer than in a classroom environment.”
Vincent J. O’Brien, of Vincent J. O’Brien CPA PC, was forced to adjust to remote presentations for his tax seminars earlier this year. O’Brien, owner of CPE provider M+O=CPE, limits his presentations to tax law. He found that both attendance and audience participation for the remote sessions remained at approximately the same level as his live presentations.
“The attendees did participate,” he said. “They were enthused, and asked good questions at a level of our in-person meetings. It was enjoyable for me to have that level of participation. And the numbers are close to last year’s numbers. The tax law changes at both the federal and state levels have helped drive this.”
Bill Nemeth, executive director and education chair of the Georgia Association of Enrolled Agents, has both taught and taken more than 100 hours of CE (for EAs) and CPE (for CPAs) this year. “I take a lot of education courses just to evaluate speakers and find new ones for our courses,” he said.
“With the remote format, we’re not constrained by geography,” he said. “We found we could send our presentations to contemporaries in other states.”
The desire to hold in-person conferences and events won’t vanish overnight, nor should it, according to Roger Harris, president of Padgett Business Services: “There’s still value in gathering together, both from a professional development perspective, as well as the benefits it offers socially. Feedback from our tax seminar participants suggested a preference for at least a partial return to in-person events.”
“We’re planning to test a hybrid model for some of our planned events in 2021, allowing those who want to attend in-person to do so, while keeping virtual options open to attract more attendees and greater participation,” he explained. “This new format will allow the best practices from the virtual sessions to be incorporated into the tried-and-true in-person setup that many miss.”
