How Setting Short and Long-Term Goals Can Improve Employee Experience

Employee experience involves how and why things get done at work. This includes every touchpoint your employees have throughout their time working for your company.

A positive work environment, meaningful work, and supportive management contribute to a great employee experience. Trust in leadership and growth opportunities are important as well.

One way to elevate employee experience is through collaborative goal-setting. This provides your employees a say in what they work toward and the targets they aim for.

Collaborative goal setting encompasses the aspects mentioned above that contribute to an attractive employee experience. These are reasons why you should begin setting goals with your employees today.

Discover how collaborative goal-setting helps improve the employee experience.

Goal Setting Impacts Career Success

Helping your employees understand what they are working toward and why it matters impacts job satisfaction.

  • Having clear reasons to reach their goals gives your employees motivation, especially during difficult times.
  • Establishing the steps needed to reach their goals maps out which actions employees should take and when.
  • Setting milestones lets your employees know how successful they are in making progress toward their goals.
  • Celebrating your employees’ successes provides encouragement to continue moving forward.

Achievement of Short- and Long-Term Goals Improves Retention

Employees usually need to achieve a series of short-term goals in order to reach their long-term goals.

  • Short-term goals typically take 6 months to 3 years to attain.
  • Long-term goals typically take 3 to 5 years to achieve.
  • The more short-term goals your employees reach, the more encouraged they are to build on their successes.
  • The more long-term goals your employees reach, the more likely they are to remain with your organization.

Creation of SMART Goals Impacts Accomplishments

Work with your employees to develop specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound (SMART) goals.

  • Clarify exactly what each employee is working toward, so they know when they successfully reach it.
  • Include numbers or other hard data to measure success.
  • Make sure each goal can be obtained through the steps created and within the given timeframe.
  • Tie each goal to your company goals.
  • Ensure each goal can be achieved in the established time period.
  • Schedule regular check-ins with your employees to determine their progress. Talk about where they are at and where they should be.
  • Give praise when appropriate. Provide guidance to get back on track when necessary.

Looking for Accounting and Finance Talent?

Helping your employees set and attain short- and long-term goals enhances employee experience. When your employees understand the reasoning behind the targets they are working to reach, your employees are more likely to continue making progress toward their objectives. This helps increase engagement and retention rates.

If you are looking for accounting and finance talent, talk with Casey Accounting & Finance Resources. Reach out to find out more today.

5 Skill Tests to Make Sure Your Temp Employees Are the Right Fit

As an accounting and finance manager, there will be times when you need to add temp employees to your team. Your permanent employees may be taking a vacation, on a planned leave, out sick, or unexpectedly no longer part of your company.

Bringing aboard temp employees can help even out the workload for your team. Because these employees come from a staffing agency, you know they are vetted and skilled in their work.

Temp employees require little training to begin producing. However, you may want to conduct skills tests to make sure these employees have what it takes to succeed in a role.

The following are five skills tests you may use to make sure your temp employees fit with an open position.

1. Reading Comprehension

The tasks required of temporary employees typically involve reading comprehension, speed, and other written communication skills.

  • Temp employees need to receive, process, and send accurate information in emails, memos, reports, and other documents.
  • Temp employees must read written instructions to perform specific tasks.
  • Temp employees have to read reports to provide overviews to their managers.

2. Writing

Emails, memos, instructions, and related tasks require strong writing skills.

  • Temp employees may be asked to write an executive summary of a manager’s report.
  • This requires the proper tone, brevity, clarity, and precision.

3. Typing Speed and Accuracy

Because temporary employees often use computers, the employees must have typing skills.

  • You want temp employees who can type at high speeds.
  • Look for temp employees with a low error rate.

4. Word Processing

Temporary office employees need to understand your word processing software.

  • Proper use of the layout and typography features is needed to format documents in line with your company’s style and brand.
  • The temporary employees should be able to create fillable forms and modify templates for communications where the format is fixed, but the information varies, such as a monthly report.

5. Spreadsheets

Many tasks that temporary employees perform involve spreadsheets.

  • Temp employees may need to create spreadsheets to perform important functions.
  • Examples include tracking customer contacts or updating information in an existing spreadsheet, such as adding monthly sales for each sales professional.

Looking for Temporary Accounting & Finance Professionals?

Adding temp employees to your team can help ease the workload. You may want to provide skills tests to make sure the temp employees are able to complete the tasks that are expected of them. Our recruiters have access to hundreds of behavioral and skill tests to predict candidate workplace performance. We also offer interactive training modules for candidates who might need a refresher or to improve their skills.

When you need to temporarily fill accounting and finance roles, turn to Casey Accounting & Finance Resources. Find out more about how we can fill your temporary staffing needs today.

What’s the Price of Not Offering Mental Health Benefits in Your Workplace?

Employers might think that their employees’ mental well-being is none of their business. In fact, it’s just the opposite. The stress and isolation caused by the pandemic appear to have heightened our desire for work/life integration and exacerbated the pressure, tension, and anxiety we are all feeling.

According to Understood.org, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that depression and anxiety alone result in a cost of one trillion dollars per year in lost productivity (“Mental Health in the Workplace,” World Health Organization). A combined World Economic Forum and Harvard School of Public Health study estimated that between 2011 and 2030, the global financial impact of mental disorders will total $16.3 trillion in lost output (Candeias and Arnaud).

Nami.org notes that each year, one in five adults in the U.S. will experience mental illness, yet only one in three who need help will get it (Workplacementalhealth.org). Employees experiencing mental health issues like depression and anxiety are less productive or missing work altogether, even those working from home. This has a ripple effect throughout the organization. That’s why focusing on workplace mental well-being is important to an organization’s bottom line.

Stress Awareness Month and Mental Health Awareness Month

Helping employees improve their mental health is more important now than ever. April marked the start of Stress Awareness Month, and May is recognized as Mental Health Awareness Month. Since 1992, Stress Awareness Month raises awareness of the causes and cures for our modern stress epidemic. Mental Health Awareness Month has been observed since 1949 and was started by Mental Health America. This year’s theme of “Back to Basics” was chosen with the goal of providing “foundation knowledge about mental health […] and information about what people can do if their mental health is a cause for concern.”

While a healthy workplace culture can’t prevent stress and mental health problems, employers can provide more resources to help employees build mental strength. Understood.org states that according to the Society for Human Resources Management, many employers are enhancing emotional and mental health benefits. Types of support can range from managing stress to treating invisible disabilities such as anxiety and depression.

According to Understood.org, the potential benefits of supporting employee mental health include:

  • Increased productivity: Research shows that nearly 86 percent of employees treated for depression report improved work performance. And in some studies, treatment of depression has been shown to reduce absenteeism and presenteeism (lost productivity that occurs when employees are not fully functioning in the workplace because of an illness, injury, or other condition) by 40 to 60 percent.
  • Increased retention: In a 2019 survey of more than 1,500 employees nationwide, more than a third of the respondents said they had left a job due at least in part to mental health. Of these, 59 percent said mental health was the primary reason.
  • Decreased health care and disability costs: According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, rates of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases are twice as high in adults with serious mental illness.

“It’s important for managers to be trained to recognize the signs of emotional distress so they can react in a supportive rather than a punitive way,” says Jerome Schultz, Ph.D., a clinical neuropsychologist and a lecturer at Harvard Medical School. “Some employees need people around them to say, ‘Hey, I see you might be feeling stressed. Maybe now is a good time to try some breathing exercises or go take a walk.'”

Amy Morin, author of “13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do” and Inc. contributing writer, offers eight simple ways to create a mentally healthier workplace:

  • Promote a work/life balance;
  • Discuss mental health in the workplace;
  • Offer free screening tools;
  • Talk about EAP benefits often;
  • Make wellness a priority;
  • Provide in-service events;
  • Support employees’ efforts to get help; and
  • Reduce the stigma.

Ways to Support Employee Mental Health

To help you develop some activities or events for May as well as augment your current benefits, Total Wellness Health.com offers 21 Mental Health Awareness Month Activities for the Workplace. Ideas include:

  • Host a stress reduction workshop
  • Have a well-being or outdoor event day
  • Create a different kind of escape room
  • Discuss mental health
  • Schedule an on-site yoga day or other activity day; offer workplace massages
  • Have a paint party
  • Cultivate gratitude in the workplace
  • Create a coloring area
  • Giveaway wellness items
  • Promote random acts of kindness
  • Hold a community dance party

“Employees are more vulnerable to the negative impact of stress inside and outside of the workplace if they have not built strong positive relationships at work,” says Schultz. “Help make work interesting, social, and fun, so stressed-out employees aren’t working in isolation. Workplace relationships that are positive provide a source of support – that’s hard for anything else to replace.”

Additional Resources

There are many resources available to assist companies with understanding how mental health impacts their employees. We’ve provided a few of our findings here. Note that none of the resources shared in this blog are meant to be a substitute for medical diagnosis and treatment.

Recognizing and supporting your employees’ mental health with resources and stress-reducing activities is important to their well-being and productivity and should be a strategic priority for your organization.