How to Motivate Your Employees to Finish Strong in Q4

According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2022 Report, approximately 65% of employees are not fully engaged in their work. This percentage likely increases during the holiday season.

Maintaining focus during Q4 can be difficult for employees. Most are thinking about their holiday plans rather than their work tasks.

Fortunately, there are steps you can take to motivate your employees to finish the year strong. These ideas can help.

Follow these guidelines to motivate your accounting and finance team to finish strong in Q4.

Revisit Goals

Review which goals were achieved during the year and which remain. Then, clarify the goals your employees should put in additional effort to attain. Include how the goals increase company success for the current year. This sets up a strong beginning to the new year.

Offer Incentives

Provide incentives to your employees who reach their goals for Q4. Examples include gift cards, bonuses, and additional paid time off in the new year. These incentives encourage your team to go above and beyond to increase their achievements for the year.

Encourage Autonomy

Let your employees work as independently as possible. This shows you trust, value, and respect them.

Since your team members are well-trained, they understand what to do and when to do it. Provide the necessary resources and be available for questions, then let your team work independently.

Recognize Achievements

Thank your employees for their contributions and results. Include the goals your team members reached, the steps taken to attain the goals, and the impact on the organization. This increases employee engagement and performance.

Lead by Example

Model the behavior you want to see from your employees. Examples include meeting milestones, communicating status updates and challenges, and asking for assistance. Your team is likely to follow your example as their leader.

Need Help Finishing Q4 Strong?

Revisiting goals lets your employees know what to work on during Q4. Offering incentives, encouraging autonomy, and recognizing achievements show you trust, value, and respect your team.

If you need temporary team members to help finish Q4 strong, talk with Casey Accounting & Finance Resources. Learn more today.

 

Becoming a Better Finance Manager: What to Do and What Not to Do

Everyone has room for improvement at work. This includes your role as a finance manager.

Becoming a better finance manager elevates your team’s performance. Your employees likely will stay engaged longer, perform better, and remain with your organization longer.

As a result, you must do what you can to become a better finance manager. The following tips can help.

Becoming a Better Finance Manager

Do: Remain Accessible

Make yourself available to your employees. Encourage them to talk with you about their needs and concerns.

Being accessible shows you value and respect your team. It also improves employee engagement, productivity, and morale.

Don’t: Micromanage

Your role is not to perform your employees’ work. This means you do not need to hover while your team members complete their tasks.

Keep in mind you hired the best talent and trust them to effectively complete their work. You are there to provide guidance, supervision, and mentorship. This includes giving your team the necessary resources, letting them work, and being available for questions and support.

Do: Provide Feedback

Regularly give each employee constructive feedback. Include what they are doing well, what they can do better, and specific ways they can improve.

Constructive feedback builds trust and respect among your employees. It also improves employee engagement, performance, and retention.

Don’t: Shame Your Employees

Publicly embarrassing your employees does not establish your authority. Rather, it undermines your credibility and turns your team against you.

Instead, privately suggest methods to improve an employee’s performance. Use the discussion to empower your team member with specific steps to more effectively perform their work.

Do: Celebrate Accomplishments

Acknowledge when your employees reach a target, finish a project, or attain a goal. Include what each team member accomplished, the steps they took, and their impact on the organization.

You may want to send your employee a congratulatory email or take your team to lunch. Also, let other managers, supervisors, and leaders know of your employee’s or team’s success. Plus, provide a bonus, raise, or promotion when appropriate.

Celebrating employee accomplishments encourages your team to repeat the behaviors that led to the results. This elevates employee engagement, performance, and job satisfaction.

Don’t: Ignore Your Employees’ Skill Development

Employee skill development is imperative for career progression. Not having opportunities for professional development means your team members cannot move up within the organization. Lack of advancement encourages your employees to look for jobs elsewhere.

Instead, delegate tasks to your employees to promote their skill development. Also, offer stretch assignments, job shadowing, and cross-training opportunities. Plus, let your team members lead meetings and represent the company at industry events. These actions promote employee longevity with your company.

Effective Leadership Means Hiring the Best

Understanding what to do and what not to do as a finance manager makes you a more effective leader. The more your employees feel valued and respected, the longer they will stay engaged, perform their best, and remain with your organization.

Free up the time needed to manage your team by making Casey Accounting & Finance Resources part of your recruiting process. Get started today.

Is the Workforce Shrinking Before Our Eyes?

In the second part of this two-part series, we share research from Emsi, the leading provider of labor market data, on the vanishing workforce.

In the first part of this two-part series, we shared insights from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) on why the economic and labor numbers are unfamiliar with the ongoing talent shortage. You can find that article here. 

If you are in HR, a hiring manager, or running a business, you are not alone in your struggles to find workers. Wage inflation, the persistence of the Covid-19 pandemic, and workplace fatigue are all contributing to the challenge of hiring and retaining employees. In the past, when talent acquisition created anxiety among recruiters, we knew it was just a rough patch we’d all get through. Emsi’s research suggests that we’ve entered a “sansdemic” (without people), and the “hire more people” directive we’ve heard before isn’t going to help. Emsi reports the workforce is “vanishing” and will continue to disappear for decades to come. It’s not just a matter of a low labor force participation rate (LFPR), which measures people working or actively seeking work; it is a lack of available prime-age workers.

What’s Really Happening?

The last few years have been tumultuous with the pandemic. A February 2020 study by Manpower reported that a record 70% of US businesses reported a talent shortage – more than double the 32% who were having difficulty in 2015. With the Covid-19 shutdown, unemployment rates soared. In the past, when unemployment was high, talent was plentiful. But, in the frenzy of shutdowns and layoffs, and employees working from home, coupled with extended unemployment benefits and stimulus packages, workers didn’t jump back into the workforce pool. The result – millions of people not working and millions of open jobs unfilled. Esmi reports the LFPR has dropped to lows not seen since the recession of the mid-1970s.

Companies are trying to combat employee exoduses with strategies that include “internal mobility, reskilling and job redeployment…open to part-time workers, employees who live and work remotely, and workers who need training to perform…improving employee experiences with culture and wellbeing programs to make a company (and the job) more enjoyable and rewarding.”

But these tactics won’t be enough because there won’t be sufficient numbers of prime-age workers, and Covid-19 isn’t to blame. Emsi notes that this is “history catching up to us. We’ve been approaching this cliff for decades,” and there are a growing group of researchers and writers who are noticing this same trend.

In brief, Esmi reports that “there aren’t enough millennials and GenZers to fill baby boomers’ shoes”:

  • The mass exodus of boomers (workforce past)…The largest generation in US history remains a powerful cohort of key workers that still hold millions of roles. Their sudden departure from the labor force will gut the economy of crucial positions and decades of experience that will be hard to fill en masse.
  • Record-low labor force participation rate (LFPR) of prime-age workers (workforce present)…Thousands voluntarily opted out of looking for work. The children and grandchildren of baby boomers are not replacing the boomers who leave the workforce.
  • The lowest birth rates in US history (workforce future)…The national birth rate, already in decline, hit a 35-year low in 2019, and the relative size of the working-age population has been shrinking since 2008.

Where did the Prime-Age Workforce Go?

It might be easy to understand that, according to Emsi, 2.4 million women left the workforce from February 2020 to February 2021. Many stayed at home as their children attended school remotely. But Emsi tells us that this fact was overshadowed by another mass exodus – men have been disappearing from the workforce since the 1980s. Here are some additional takeaways from what Esmi is calling an “erosion of the prime-age male workforce:”

  • The prime-age male workforce (ages 25-54) plunged from 94% in 1980 to 89% in 2019. That five percentage-point drop represents over three million missing workers.
  • Millennials are expected to inherit an estimated $68 trillion from their boomer parents by 2030, making them the new, wealthiest generation in history…making millennials less motivated to seek careers of their own.
  • The opioid epidemic is a major culprit in siphoning prime-age men off the labor force.
  • The number of prime-age men willingly opting for a part-time job jumped from six million to nearly eight million in 2019.

Valuing What You Have

With the impending shortfalls, both near-term and in future decades, Emsi tells us that:

  • Education institutions and businesses will desperately compete for recruits who simply don’t exist.
  • The US stands to lose $162 billion annually due to talent shortages.

We need people. We won’t be able to “technology” ourselves out of this jam but recruiting and retention strategies can help slow the impending worker drought.

Conclusion

Emsi summarizes it by saying – “The sansdemic is going to make a tough situation tougher still. Fewer people means fewer new ideas. Fewer students. Fewer people in research and innovation. Fewer skills in the job market. Fewer employees. Fewer products and fewer goods. Fewer opportunities for growth.” Every person is going to be of value and will need to feel valued.

If you would like to receive a copy of Emsi’s research, email us at info@caseyresources.com. Let us help you develop effective retention strategies.