Communication And Employee Engagement Archives

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.

How to Build Better Relationships Among Your Staff

Encouraging positive relationships among your staff is important. The more comfortable they feel working together, the more confidently they will brainstorm, develop new ideas, and voice their opinions. Open communication develops trust, respect, self-awareness, and inclusion. Developing this foundation helps your staff members more effectively create, innovate, and embrace change. It also promotes employee engagement, productivity, and retention.

Implement these tips to encourage connectivity among your team.

Train on Emotional Intelligence

Talk with your staff about the ability to recognize their own emotions to better understand what they are communicating. The development of this skill helps your staff members become more adept at identifying the emotions of their coworkers. This lets your staff more effectively fill their own needs and the needs of others.

Encourage Mindful Listening

Teach your staff to listen more than they talk. This helps them focus on what is being said and how they can effectively contribute to the conversation. Also, encourage your staff to ask follow-up questions about an issue. They can uncover more information and be better prepared to overcome an obstacle. Plus, remind your staff to show empathy when helping others. Working in a supportive environment helps with problem-solving.

Promote Boundaries

Remind your staff not to let relationship-building interfere with productivity. Although they need to provide enough time to talk with coworkers, they also need to finish their work on time. This means that social interactions should take place during break times.

Ask Questions

Ask your staff members questions about their personal life. Show that you want to learn more about who they are. Share information about your own life as well. Also, find common ground that you can build on. These topics may become the subjects of future conversations. Set an example for your staff members to follow with each other.

Express Appreciation

Let your staff know how much you appreciate their efforts and results. For instance, point out one specific action each staff member took each day to contribute to the organization. Mention what the results were and how the action benefitted the company. This encourages your staff to interact in the same manner with their teammates. Such actions promote a supportive team culture.

Looking for Accounting & Finance Staff?

The stronger the relationships among your staff members, the more collaborative your team is. This increases engagement, productivity, and retention. It also improves job satisfaction, employee morale, and your bottom line.

Casey Accounting & Finance Resources can provide the collaborative professionals you need to fill your team’s needs. Learn more today.

Communication Skills You Should Have to Help Improve Company Culture

Strengthening communication skills in your organization provides a wealth of benefits. Among them are improved performance, stronger engagement, more cohesive teams, and innovative ideas. Because active listening and sharing are vital parts of your company’s success, they need to be embedded in your culture.

Promote these communication skills throughout your organization to enhance your culture.

Inform Employees of Company News

Ensure that employees at every level find out company news at the same time. This shows that staff at all levels are valued and respected members of the organization. Include what the next steps are and how the news may impact specific departments or employees. Allow time to answer questions and provide support during transitions.

Clarify Expectations

Share with team members what your standards and expectations are. This is especially important if your staff is working remotely. For instance, let them know which individual and team projects should be worked on at a given time. Also, regularly check in to discuss timelines, issues, feedback, next steps, and questions. This helps keep everyone on the same page.

Recognize Employee Accomplishments

Publicly and privately, thank team members for their efforts and achievements. For instance, mention during individual and team meetings specific examples of how they positively impacted the company. Also, give your staff hand-written thank-you notes expressing appreciation for their hard work and results.

Check for Non-Verbal Cues

In addition to body language, look for non-verbal cues that may signal miscommunication, defensiveness, or conflict. This is especially important for remote employees who do not benefit from the in-person interactions of working onsite. For instance, check employee emails and messages for signs of distress, frustration, or burnout. Red flags include messages sent late at night, frequent errors, and a curt tone. Also, speak privately with employees who exhibit excessive absenteeism, non-participation in meetings, and other signs of disengagement. Work to better understand the situation and offer support.

Maintain Personal Connections

Stay in regular contact with employees, colleagues, and coworkers. For instance, have conversations about personal news and outside stressors that may be affecting their work. Also, check to see how your team is doing with their well-being and job satisfaction. Additionally, celebrate birthdays, work anniversaries, and special life events.

Make Open Communication Part of Your Culture

Open communication needs to be prioritized in your company culture to maximize business success. The more staff members at all levels actively listen, share ideas, and provide support for each other, the more cohesive your workforce will be. This results in greater goal attainment long into the future.

When you are in the market to add skilled accounting and finance professionals to your organization, get in touch with Casey Accounting & Finance Resources. Find out more today.

Management Tips to Ensure Your Team is Actively Engaged

The level of engagement an employee has demonstrated how committed they are to your company and its success. It also shows how motivated and emotionally invested they are in their work. An employee must be motivated to work toward a goal in line with its vision and committed to the same values as the organization to remain engaged. As a result, the higher employee engagement is, the greater your company’s success. This is why you must work to maintain engagement among your team members.

Implement these tips to ensure your accounting and finance team remains engaged in their work.

Get to Know Your Employees

Learn all you can about your team members. For instance, find out about their families, hobbies, and interests. Also, discover what motivates them to perform their best. Additionally, ask what keeps them invested in the company’s future. Plus, uncover how they’d like to expand the business and increase its success. Use this knowledge to create a positive, productive work environment.

Set Goals

Create individual and team goals that are both challenging and realistic. This provides a sense of direction for what needs to be done and where your team members should focus their energy. Be sure to include milestones along the way to measure both progress and success.

Offer Growth Opportunities

Provide opportunities for professional growth. For instance, create stretch assignments that increase team members’ skill sets. Also, encourage your staff to develop and implement ideas to increase efficiency within the department. Plus, offer additional training and coaching in line with promotions.

Maintain Communication

Keep the lines of communication open with your team. For instance, encourage open discussion about problems as they come up. Work together to find solutions. Also, ask for employee feedback to improve your performance. Additionally, keep your staff updated on company news and developments.

Promote Autonomy

Let your teamwork as independently as possible. This shows you trust them to complete their tasks without being watched over. Ensure you clearly communicate what needs to be done and make yourself available to answer questions. Also, regularly check in on your team’s progress to see how they’re doing and provide feedback. Plus, encourage them to learn from their mistakes and do better next time.

Recognize Achievements

Acknowledge individual and team accomplishments. For instance, thank your team members for their efforts. Also, point out how individual contributions led up to a finished product. Provide monetary rewards for major achievements.

Hire Engaged Accounting & Finance Professionals

The promotion of employee engagement is one key to your accounting and finance team’s success. Engaged team members produce at higher levels and remain with your company longer. Setting goals, maintaining communication, and promoting autonomy are three ways to encourage engagement.

When you need to add engaged professionals to your team, partner with Casey Accounting & Finance Resources, we provide high-performance candidates who will make strong contributions to your company. Find out more today.

Employee Retention: Best Practices to Keep Your Employees Engaged

Employee retention is a big talking point at companies in every industry, with HR managers and other department heads trying to find new ways to keep employees – especially their most talented ones – from jumping ship. Part of employee retention is keeping employees engaged in what they are doing. If you are perplexed by poor employee retention and grumbling unhappy workers, your organization could be in trouble without prompt action.

Here, we will discuss the best practices to keep your employees engaged so they stick with your company and stay productive.

Commit to Open Communication

Let employees know what their jobs require and why their jobs are important to the success of the company. Make sure employees know that collaboration is welcome, especially when it comes to completing projects. Your company’s leaders must also encourage employee feedback and listen to it. Treat your temporary employees the same way and respect their ideas and contribution to the company goals.

Take Advantage of Social Media

Your company can create a safe place for employees to discuss issues within the industry with their co-workers by taking part in debates and other discussions. You could also create a Facebook page for new additions to your company where they can interact with each other prior to their first day on the job. They can also use the group to discuss how their first couple of months have gone at the company.

Create a Culture That’s Intentional

Creating an intentional culture is actually a good way to make sure that employees know how they are expected to act at the office and how the company wants them to fit in with others when it comes to their values. There is no reason to hide the corporate culture from employees. Hang posters, send newsletters, discuss it in meetings and write emails that explain the culture and the company’s values.

Support Employee Career Development

Employees want to know that they can climb the corporate ladder without having to switch employers multiple times. They do not want to get stuck in a dead-end job. If you want to keep your employees engaged, and in-house, make sure they have a defined career development path. Create learning opportunities and have a mentoring system in place for skills transfer.

Take one or two of the tips outlined above and put them to work for your company so you can keep employees engaged. The effort will be well worth it because of higher productivity and employees who will be more loyal to your company.

Casey Accounting & Finance Resources is a trusted staffing firm that provides innovative and creative solutions. Contact us today and see how we will exceed your expectations as one of the top finance recruiters in Chicago.