How to develop skill sets in a stable and long-term accounting department

If you inherit an accounting department that has been together with the same responsibilities for a long time, how can you stretch your staff to do more analytics or look at their processes differently? Our FEWnet small groups discussed 3 approaches to enhancing team performance.

Home Grown: Pick the people who show desire and aptitude to learn new things and work with them to expand their level of work.

New Blood: Hire a new person to fill the initial role; raising the bar and pushing others to keep up.

Team Approach: Inspire accountability by assigning team members to be responsible for certain P/L items. Require them to explain why this month varies from plan, last month, last year…whatever metric is most meaningful. 

Working through difficult times

Giving communication top priority is a common theme among FEWnet groups in the first quarter, especially communicating the positives. Transparency within companies is particularly important in difficult economic times. Dr. Cheryl Leitschuh, Chair of the AICPA Women’s Initiative Executive Committee, sat in on a few of our lunches this spring and shared five steps to succeeding in today’s business environment.

• Understand human motivation
• Have a plan (these are usually short-term and small-scale)
• Pull customers and vendors closer together
• Pull employees closer together
• Improve processes
 

Employee morale boosters

We’re all trying to come up with effective, inexpensive ways to keep team morale up during uncertain times. FEWnet small group members are seeing:

• More involvement from employees as leadership asks for cost containment idea generation to come at all levels of the organization. Staff is feeling more valued for their ideas and the company benefits from an “all in this together” team mindset.
• Personalized cards and small gifts from manager to employee for anniversaries.
• Increased leadership communication as companies more frequently share the next steps for the business.
• Group activities have a more familial, pot luck approach as people are more mindful of how they spend their dollars. Great fun being had, without breaking the bank, includes Wii bowling tournaments, lunchroom televisions, and book clubs.

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