3 Tips For Reducing Turnover At Your Company

Is your company losing talent? Are your employees quitting and moving on to your competitors?

Here are some tips for reducing turnover at your company from Donna Levin, VP Care.com Workplace Solutions and Co-Founder of Care.com.

1. Understanding WHY employees leave in the first place.

If you’re having retention problems, you need to think about WHY your employees are running for the door.

“People don’t leave companies; they leave bad situations, dead-end jobs, and micromanagers,” says Levin. “They leave to find greener pastures, professional development and work-life balance.”

Understanding what’s triggering people to quit in favor of a new opportunity will help you improve deep-seeded problems within your culture. Fixing these problems will make recruiting and retaining talent much easier for you...

To read full article, click here.

Source: Ariella Coombs (www.careerealism.com)

Why Character Should Matter to Your Firm and to Your Employees

You probably expended considerable time and energy developing your firm’s reputation and cultivating a professional image. Well and good. Character represents a third key element and is vital even in the midst of tax season … especially in the midst of tax season.

Character, it has been said, is who you are when no one else is watching. As an accountant, what is your character like? How about that of your firm?

Kindness for Its Own Sake
A friend of mine returning to a conference in Nashville, Tennessee, did not have the appropriate change to give the taxi driver, and this particular cabbie did not accept credit cards. My friend was $3 short and flat out of options...

To read full article, click here.

Source: Jeff Davidson (www.accountingweb.com)

Consider These 3 Tax-Time Tips and Tricks to Grow Your Accounting Practice

Tax season is upon us and it’s a safe bet that many of you are busy crunching numbers and wading through pay stubs and W-2s. But in the middle of the frenzy, remember that it’s not just about getting the job done. It’s also the best time to think strategically about how to grow your accounting practice as a whole and build revenue for the coming year. At the end of the day, an accounting practice is a business – your business.

Armed with the right knowledge, you can save yourself valuable time and resources, laying the groundwork for an even better tax season the following year. So take a break from your piles of work and consider these three tax-time tips and tricks to grow your practice.

1. Push for online accounting. Shoebox clients – those who keep their receipts and invoices in a box until tax time – can be some of the most challenging clients to work with. However, if you show them that online accounting does away with much of the paperwork and demonstrate the ease of pulling reports from the cloud for filing, then you can both be relieved of last-minute rushes. On your end, the use of online accounting will free up significant time spent processing just one client’s books and enable you to move on to the next...

To read full article, click here.

Source: Amy Vetter (www.accountingweb.com)

Top 10 Tax and Accounting Mistakes Cost Companies Billions

With tax season officially underway, many corporate tax and accounting departments are busily preparing for the looming March deadline. Each year, however, tax and accounting mistakes end up costing U.S. businesses billions. In 2013 alone, U.S. businesses accumulated nearly $7 billion in IRS civil penalties stemming incorrectly reporting business income and employment values.

Despite a growing reliance on internal tools and technology, the potential for human error and its costly consequences remain. To uncover the most common mistakes plaguing corporate tax and accounting departments today, and find out how those mistakes vary across company size and industries, Bloomberg BNA conducted a survey of 200 in-house tax and accounting professionals, over half of which represent firms with revenues above $1 billion. From technological pitfalls to regulatory confusion, here’s a look at the top ten end-user and tax-and-accounting rule-based mistakes that may be costing your organization

1. Manually inputting incorrect data into an enterprise system.

With the amount of data entry that occurs in most accounting departments, it’s probably not much of a surprise that manually inputting incorrect data is the most common mistake. While the occasionally erroneous spreadsheet cell is inevitable, when left uncaught it can lead to an audit and penalties...

To read full article, click here.

Source: Dean Sonderegger (www.cfo.com)

Top do’s and don’ts when opening a new CPA office

Late last year, I entered my 34th year in practice and completed my fourth CPA office opening, in Park City, Utah. Our firm now has nine offices in three states. Opening an office more than 700 miles from the one I had been working at in Long Beach, Calif., presented a number of unique issues, including adapting to a true four-season climate (where I am accumulating summer and winter tires at an alarming rate), learning about a new regional business environment, identifying other local professional service providers to partner with, and getting the firm and myself registered with the state of Utah.

Is your firm considering opening a new office in the near future? If so, here are a few of the lessons I’ve learned while making my many relocations:  

1. Do your research. If you are venturing into a new geographic region, there are many things you should research before you make the move, including your competition, typical billing rates in the area, the employment market, the types of salaries your potential clients will make, and the candidate pool for new hires.
2. Relocate or hire key staffers. Evaluate whether any of your current employees might be open to relocating. When we opened a satellite office for a Big Four firm in the Los Angeles market, the managing partner allowed us to hand-pick our staff and seniors to ensure that the transition was smooth and the probability of success was higher. But if such transfers aren’t practical for your firm, your priority should be to hire a key employee (generally a manager) who has many connections in your new community and can assist with recruiting, practice development, and community involvement. Consider using a headhunter to help you find the right person.

To read full article, click here.

Source: Blake Christian, CPA (www.cpa2biz.com)

The 5 Key Tips to Resolve Your Love/Hate Affair with QuickBooks

As an Advanced QuickBooks Expert I often talk to accountants who have very strong opinions about QuickBooks. They either love it or hate it. What I have found is that many times, accountants love and hate QuickBooks for the same reasons. I thought I’d share the top five reasons why accountants love/hate QuickBooks and some tips to help you love QuickBooks just a little more.

Tip No. 1: It’s easy to change transactions in QuickBooks
This is the No. 1 reason why accountants have a love/hate relationship with QuickBooks: it's so easy to change transactions. You love QuickBooks because you can make changes easily without making lots of journal entries. You hate QuickBooks because clients can make changes so easily.

To keep clients from making changes in QuickBooks, I recommend setting up Date Warnings in QuickBooks and also password protecting closed periods...

To read full article, click here.

Source: Veronica Wasek (www.accountingweb.com)

Millennials Want to Be Coached at Work

...The young people in your office...crave — and respond to — a good, positive coach, who can make all the difference in their success. In a global survey that we at SuccessFactors conducted in 2014 in partnership with Oxford Economics, 1,400 Millennials told us they want more feedback from their managers...most Millennials want feedback at least monthly, whereas non-Millennials are comfortable with feedback less often. Overall, Millennials want feedback 50% more often than other employees. They also told us that their number one source of development is their manager, but only 46% agreed that their managers delivered on their expectations for feedback...

Our subsequent conversations with hundreds of Millennials made it clear that what they want most from their managers isn't more managerial direction, per se, but more help with their own personal development. One Millennial we spoke with summed up a theme we heard again and again: “I would like to move ahead in my career. And to do that, it’s very important to be in touch with my manager, constantly getting coaching and feedback from him so that I can be more efficient and proficient.”

To read full article, click here.

Source: Karie Willyerd (www.hbr.org)

How to Help Your Team Bounce Back from Failure

No one likes to fail. And while we all know the importance of learning from mistakes, both individuals and teams can struggle to bounce back from big blunders. Whether it was a project that didn’t meet its targets or an important deadline that you all missed, what can you do to help your employees recover? How can you help them see the experience as an opportunity for growth instead of the kiss of death?

What the Experts Say It’s often harder to lead a team past a failure than it is to help one person. “People are coming into projects with different expectations, perspectives, levels of investment, and different things at stake,” explains Susan David, a founder of the Harvard/McLean Institute of Coaching and author of the HBR article, “Emotional Agility.” “Some people may be very resilient and others might feel more bruised,” Ben Dattner, an organizational psychologist and author of The Blame Game. “All the things that individuals fall prey to — misattribution and rationalization — are compounded on a team and add exponential complexity to the process.” It doesn’t matter whether one person on your team is at fault or if everyone bears some of the responsibility, it’s your job as the manager to help the entire group move on. Here’s how.

First, take control of your own emotions...

To read full article, click here.

Source: Amy Gallo (www.hbr.org)

7 Tasks Successful Leaders Never Delegate

I’ve made the point before that knowing when and how to delegate is a trait of good leaders. It shows trust in your employees and ensures that you are focusing your own time and skills in your zone of genius — the tasks that only you can do.

But I’d like to argue that there are some things that should never be delegated because they will make you too far removed from your team, open you up for criticism, or ultimately paint you in a bad light.

If you’ve delegated any of the following tasks, I suggest you move these back into your zone of genius:

1. Core functions or responsibilities
   Neither a company nor an individual employee should ever outsource their core competencies — the tasks that add the most value. As an employee, if you outsource these tasks, your boss may wonder why he needs to keep you around at all. As a company, you may find yourself held hostage if you outsource and your partner leaves or demands more money...

To read full article, click here.

Source: Bernard Marr (www.linkedin.com)

So You Want to Be a Headhunter?

Recruiting for my own team is a natural part of being the director of a recruitment company. However, what I’ve discovered is that many people don’t have a clue what being a headhunter means. The title sounds fancy and seeking out exceptional talent sounds glamorous, but before you pursue a career in recruitment, there are a few important things you should know first.

1. It’s a fast-paced business!

There are no promises or guarantees in our business, meaning that priorities and objectives can change very rapidly. A single call from an important customer or an email detailing a new job order may change the entire plan for a given day, especially when you work in a success-fee mode. Being “close to the money” is usually the best indicator that you are working on a) the right things in b) the right order, but remember…situations can change quickly!

This also means unpredictable schedules. Timing is everything in recruiting…but time also kills deals! As a recruiter, you can’t be afraid to set firm deadlines with your candidates and clients. As headhunters, we are paid to deliver results in a timely manner. Recruiters need to constantly react to changing circumstances and ensure that candidates and clients are both on the same page...

To read full article, click here.

Source: Adam Lyko (www.linkedin.com)

What to Do If Your Team Is in a Rut

Another brainstorming session, another slew of tired ideas. Your team is in a rut, but what can you do about it? How can you push everyone to be more creative? Where should you seek inspiration? What’s the best way to bring in new perspectives? And finally: how do you prevent the group from getting stuck again?

What the Experts Say
Teams get stale from time to time for all sorts of reasons. After all, everyone is “seeing the same data, interacting with the same people, and having the same conversations, so it’s no surprise that the ideas coming out feel as though they’ve all been done before,” says Scott Anthony, the managing partner of Innosight and the author of The First Mile. But you can get your people back into the groove with a little work, says Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg, a partner at The Innovation Architects, the advisory firm, and the coauthor of Innovation as Usual.  “Sometimes you need to rethink what you’re doing.” Here are some ways to get your team’s creative juices flowing.

Diagnose and fix any obvious problemsThe first step is to “take a step back and diagnose the problem,” suggests Wedell-Wedellsborg. “Observe what’s going on and ask other people’s opinions.” Think about when, where, and how your team has been most innovative in the past. Can you recreate that environment or group dynamic? “Figure out how people share ideas, and how open others are to those ideas,” he says. Also look at ideas that were generated in the past and see if any are worth resuscitating. “Maybe it was a good idea before its time or maybe it was an idea that was not managed well,” says Anthony. “You’re not looking for the perfect idea, it’s what you do with the idea that matters...

To read full article, click here.

Source: Rebecca Knight (www.hbr.org)

Five Things That Repel Candidates

All the data shows that we're about to enter a period of massive talent shortage. The events of the global recession have acted as a bit of a smoke-screen to the underlying facts - more and more businesses are growing, and there is less specialist talent.

As unemployment is falling, so too are there other forces at work. More start-ups than even before. The increase of remote working. And perhaps most influential of all: the effect of social - with the internet, most candidates have made up their minds on a company waaayyy before they turn up to interview (if they decide to attend in the first place).

All this means that hiring managers need to be more careful than ever when interviewing. News travels faster than ever - your reputation is more important than even before.

Here are five things that all hiring managers must avoid:

1) Not following up quickly (or even worse not following up at all)...

To read full article, click here.

Source: Jas Singh (www.linkedin.com)

Before You Hire Anyone, Ask These 2 Questions

Building a business is scary, challenging, frustrating, but above all, ultimately fun. It's a rush to know your company is getting bigger.

And because it is, and because the work tends to pile up so far so fast, you might be in a hurry to add people to your team. That's understandable.

But whether this is your first hire or your 40th, it's a good idea to ask these two questions before you start issuing anyone a W-2.

1. What are we missing?

You always want complementary skills. Some people only think this is required at the beginning, when you look to find a Ms. Outside to your Mr. Inside. But they are not thinking big enough.

Yes, of course, when you are first getting under way, you want someone who offsets your weaknesses with his or her strengths.

But even when you are growing, you want to keep that concept in mind. Companies, departments, and teams take on characteristics of their own and they can become over-indexed in an area. You can end up with too many number crunchers or too many people who are great at strategy but not enough who are implementers. Balance is important at every stage of a company's growth. When things get out of whack, problems usually follow.

And that brings us to point 2...

To read full article, click here.

Source: Paul B. Brown (www.inc.com)

Here's one thing great bosses should never say

That person who is our boss has a tremendous impact on us at work — far beyond the obvious things like which office we are assigned to, or the jobs we do each day. The better the boss, the more engaged team members are, and the better their performance.

In one study of more than 2,500 leaders in a large financial services company, the engagement, satisfaction, and commitment levels of people working for the organization's worst leaders was only 4%, while the engagement, satisfaction, and commitment levels of people working for the organization's best leaders was an astronomical 92%.

When you're a boss, what you say matters. Your words can have an immediate — and long-lasting — effect on your people, and as a result, on your customers, suppliers, shareholders, and community.

While there are many things the best leaders say to the members of their team to inspire them to greater levels of engagement and performance, there are some things you should just never say — particularly this one thing: 

"I give up."

To read full article, click here.

Source: The Build Network (www.businessinsider.com)

4 Ways to Build a Better Faster Talent Pipeline

We hear a lot about sales pipelines, but do you also think about talent management that way? It makes sense. Not everyone is destined to stay with your company or organization for the long term. It helps to think about talent as a pipeline, a continuous process.

Your talent pipeline includes new talent, intermediate talent, high capability talent, interim talent, and management and leadership talent. Then you need a way to move new talent to intermediate and high capability positions. You"ll need to secure interim talent to cover service gaps or other operating needs, which could be sourced from an agency, other departments, or a contingent talent pool.

1. Rapid On-Boarding & Accelerated Job Proficiency Training for New Hires

For new hires, having a Learning Path in place for their position guarantees an efficient and rapid on-boarding process, usually for the first weeks or months in a new job, which are the most difficult for a new employee. Employees are most daunted during that time and more apt to leave if there is no tangible development plan in place. The Learning Path, which contains all the training and learning they will need to perform well on that particular job and shows them what they will be learning and doing by when, alleviates this pressure...

To read full article, click here.

Source: Arupa Tesolin (www.linkedin.com)

7 Ways Highly Successful People Achieve More

Some people get more done than others — a lot more.

Sure, they work hard. And they work smart. (While "smarter, not harder" is fine, smarter and harder is way better.) But they also possess a few other qualities that make a major impact on their performance:

1. They do the work in spite of disapproval or ridicule.

Work too hard, strive too hard, appear to be too ambitious, try to stand out from the crowd... and the average person resents you. It's a lot easier and much more comfortable to dial it back and fit in.

Pleasing the (average-performing) crowd is something highly productive people don't worry about. (They may think about it, but then they keep pushing on.) They hear the criticism, they take the potshots, they endure the laughter or derision or even hostility... and they keep on measuring themselves and their efforts by their own standards.

And, in the process, they achieve what they want to achieve. (Which is really all that matters...

To read full article, click here.

Source: Jeff Haden (www.businessinsider.com)

7 Valuable Leadership Lessons From LinkedIn's Billionaire Founder

After getting a master's degree in philosophy from Oxford in 1993, Reid Hoffman was ready to enter the world of academia. But a job at Apple started a career in tech that eventually led him to cofound LinkedIn in 2002...

...Entrepreneur and author Ben Casnocha has worked closely with (Reid) Hoffman since 2010, collaborating on the books "The Start-up of You" and "The Alliance," and serving as Hoffman's chief of staff from 2012 to 2014.

In Casnocha's new blog post, "10,000 Hours with Reid Hoffman: Lessons on Business and Life," he reflects on the time spent with his mentor. We've summarized seven of the leadership lessons he learned from Hoffman.

1. Recognize that everyone has flaws, but acknowledge their strengths.

Casnocha writes that Hoffman doesn't fall into the easy trap of seeing people in a binary way, as in brilliant or an idiot, ethical or conniving.

Hoffman, Casnocha writes, "appreciates the full spectrum of strengths and weaknesses of a particular person. He'll comment on a friend's character flaw — say, self-centeredness — but in the next breath note one of their unique strengths. Flaws that cause others to completely disengage are, for Reid, 'navigable' (to use a Reid-ism) en route to their better side...

To read full article, click here.

Source: Richard Feloni (www.businessinsider.com)

Is it intelligence or personality that matters?

It probably goes without saying that most organizations strive to attract the most talented people, whether it’s through direct employment, or more recently via open innovation challenges. It doesn’t always work out however. I’ve written before about studies that explore this topic, and in particular the belief that having lots of talented people will inspire and cajole the best out of each of them. The study found that having talented people in a team did little to raise the performance of less talented people in that team.

Studies throughout the past few decades have generally correlated intelligence with good performance at work. Most of these studies were conducted in an environment where the duties expected of an employee were relatively tightly controlled, and certainly didn’t account for things such as collaboration or anything outside of the job description.

A more recent study highlights how in the more modern work environment, intelligence is a much less accurate proxy for performance. The study, conducted via a meta analysis, honed studies down to a final short list of 35 that explored things like collaboration and citizenship within the workplace.

Whilst the meta analysis did reveal a small link between general intelligence and citizenship behaviours, this link was significantly smaller than between intelligence and task performance. The researchers instead found that personality was at least as influential to collaborative behaviours as was intelligence...

To read full article, click here.

Source: Ado Gaskell (www.linkedin.com)

Introvert or Extrovert: Making the Most Out of Who You Are as a Leader

During her nearly 40-year career as a clinical and organizational psychologist and executive coach, Joan Pastor, PhD, has had the chance to assess nearly every leadership philosophy in the field. But Pastor, president of JPA International, Inc., has noticed that one tenet seems to stand the test of time regardless of the popular, and sometimes passing, wisdom of the day: it's our innate tendency to be more introverted or extroverted that plays a huge role in determining our natural approach to leadership, as well as our personal happiness and professional success.

Once people begin to understand whether they are introverts or extroverts, and to what degree, Pastor says, they can begin to unlock the secrets to their best personal leadership style.

“The idea that ‘good leaders are born not made’ isn’t true. Ninety-nine percent of true leaders never planned or chose to be leaders. They rose to the top because they were gifted and skilled in some key area, and the cream rises to the top,” Pastor says. “But when you become a leader, you have to determine to what degree you are comfortable interacting with other people and how you want to communicate with them...

To read full article, click here.

Source: Deanna White (www.accountingweb.com)

The 2 Most Powerful Words A Manager Can Use

With all the professionalism and political correctness in today's workplace, we sometimes miss out on the fact that people really want to feel appreciated — and a 'thank you' is all it sometimes takes.

A very close friend of mine is Eleanor, who is a teacher and probably one of the most conscientious and hard working people I know. Eleanor goes beyond what is expected of her every day to make sure she brings out the best in every child in her class. She is happy to plan her lessons until late at night to make sure they are exciting and engaging.

All her official feedback and performance reviews have rated her as outstanding. What might surprise many, however, is that Eleanor has just quit a job she loves because she feels unappreciated. Instead of all the formal but impersonal feedback, all she wanted was some appreciation from another human being…

But she didn't get it.

Our local school and children are suffering a major loss, because the people managing Eleanor didn't act like people. They didn't do the one thing all of our mothers probably told us to do when we were kids: they didn't say thank you....

To read full article, click here.

Source: Bernard Marr (www.businessinsider.com)