Culture Club

Last week we kicked off our series imploring you to spend time ON your business, not IN your business. This week we need to address something that is so easily forgotten and rarely gets the constant focus that is required.  Therefore, the second of the 7 steps is: 
​

2. CULTURE CLUB

How much time do you spend with your team, teaching them, listening to them, empowering them? As a Partner in a business, why did you hire staff to begin with instead of just staying a lone ranger? To remind you, no doubt the original need stemmed from your lack of capacity to complete all your client workload and run a business, therefore hiring staff to complete that workload so you could in turn acquire new clients or additional client work and then have it completed, increasing turnover and therefore profit. 

Some experts would suggest that Partners in an Accounting firm should only spend approximately 30% of their time on chargeable client work. This gives you 70% of your working week to spend time on growing your business and your team.

Improving or creating a positive culture within your firm where your team feel valued, empowered, supported and have a sense of job satisfaction, means that for the time they are with you, they are more focused on the job at hand and will be more productive, therefore making them a valuable asset to your business. 

Spending time on their development means they will make better managers and potentially business partners in the future. It will also ensure your clients are receiving a positive experience, therefore increasing client retention.

There are many inexpensive tools that can create a positive culture. With the changing landscape in software, internal messaging tools such as Yammer, Skype for business or Slack can replace emails and create a forum for streamlined communication.

Then there are services such as Cultrureamp, or Officevibe that measure your team’s engagement through the use of quick surveys. If these don’t appeal to you, then schedule regular and productive individual catch-ups with every team member, both of you can learn a lot from these meetings!


In the next blog, we're going to talk about Starting to be Pro-active, RATHER THAN RE-ACTIVE....want to know more? Get in touch for a chat!