No More Saturdays: A New Busy Season Strategy?

Source: ConvergenceCoaching, LLC Inspired Ideas

The following includes excerpts, reproduced with permission, from a blog post by Jennifer Wilson.

In my CPA Insider blog this week, I challenged firm leaders to evaluate their “old school” practices and shift toward more engaging, motivating, and even “cool” ways of operating as a means to retain top talent. One of the ideas we're hearing cool firms employ is the elimination of mandatory Saturdays during busy season.

Instead of mandating specific work days and hours, firms are instead:

• Establishing specific revenue and realization goals for each staff member – broken down into a weekly number, and then providing a means for the team members to track their progress against these goals.
• Establishing goals for client deliverables, like turnaround-time goals, filing objectives, and workflow targets, such that there are clear metrics to ensure that backups do not occur.
• Teaching all team members practice economics so they understand the drivers of firm growth and profitability and their part in contributing to the financial well-being of the firm.
• Ensuring that the performance measurement and reward system for team members provides incentives for meeting their financial and client service objectives.
• Investing in technology to enable access to client workpapers, files, and production systems anytime, anywhere, with performance that rivals the performance of office access.
• Investing in communication protocols that provide for “on call” support of managers, principals, or partners who are available to provide “tech support” to staff members who need help when working remotely.
• Assigning specific people to measure and report on departmental and firm performance against goals on a weekly basis during peak periods and making adjustments to your work approach as needed.

For the complete article, read “Are Mandatory Saturdays a Thing of the Past?”

From Convergence Coaching, LLC Inspired Ideas, http://blog.convergencecoaching.com, November 30, 2011.