We welcomed 5 new interns yesterday as part of our Summer Internship Class of 2020. We made the ultimate decision to keep our summer internship, despite all the obvious challenges related to COVID-19. To make sure their time here is successful, we have worked to establish and maintain a clear channel of communication with them. Our recruiting coordinator, Tiffany, has been in contact with them every few weeks to answer questions and just check-in. This helped to ensure that when they were onboarded, they felt like they had someone to rely on if anything came up. We also pushed their start date back a couple weeks to June 15. The state of Virginia entered Phase 1 mid-May and phase 2 at the beginning of June. This allowed for employees to return to work while maintaining social distance and having proper cleaning measures in place. The interns are in desks that are spaced out 6ft. from other employees. Our firm also made sure technology measures were put into place to improve productivity – making sure all interns had an extra monitor to bring home and noise-cancelling headphones. While we know this internship looks different from those in the past, we want to give our 5 interns a chance to see what public accounting looks like in 2020.