In accounting firms across the UK, senior management often grapple with maintaining staff morale which can have a knock-on effect to retaining them. Even if you think this is not the case, wouldn’t you want to increase morale and efficiency across the firm, which will ultimately leadto better fiscal results?

So what problem is affecting morale? Typically, its manual low value repetitive activities, along with frustration with how a process, such as tax returns, is being done.

Common challenges include:

• Poor document handling
• Inefficient communication with clients
• Lack of visibility within the firm
• Workflow inefficiencies

These issues not only hamper productivity but also have a detrimental impact on employees' morale. This could result in a high staff turnover rate and a disengaged workforce.

Disconnected senior management teams are a problem (sorry!)

When senior management is unable to streamline workflow processes it leads to a chaotic work environment.

Employees find themselves running around, duplicating tasks, and engaging in monotonous manual processes.

Client interactions are therefore disorganised and poorly controlled, leading to missed opportunities and dissatisfied customers.

The repercussions of this are far-reaching.

• Staff morale takes a significant hit as employees struggle to keep up with a chaotic workflow.
• It becomes challenging to retain high-quality staff and even more difficult to recruit new talent. The remaining staff are left feeling lost, confused, and disengaged.

A disengaged team is less productive, less motivated, and less likely to stay with the firm in the long term.

The cost of recruiting new staff is high, not to mention the time and resources spent on training them.

Moreover, a high turnover rate can tarnish the company's reputation, making it even more challenging to attract top talent.

How can the problem be addressed?

There are 4 core principles that any process such as tax, audit, accounts,VAT, etc need to start taking advantage of :

Automation

Activities such as chasing clients or outstanding information need to be automated. Its simply a waist of valuable time having staff manually send emails to clients prompting them for outstanding information.

Visibility

Using tools that give you real-time reporting and tracking empowers you and your team to oversee the advancement of all client information requests. The efficiencies this produces allows everyone to focus on higher value activities.

Auto-channelled communication

Modern information gathering tools, keep all client communication with your team in the same location, Save significant amounts of time and reduce the risk of overlooked communication, duplicated client requests, or the use of wrong information, which could lead to extended turnaround times, or in the worst case, fines.

Tracking and client convenience

Tracking allows the staff, but more importantly the client, to easily see what is outstanding and what is expected from them. Making for a more efficient and more satisfactory experience working with your firm.

Its time to move these processes out of email into a tool that supports your staff and helps the overall efficiency of the firm, allowing them to focus on high value activities rather than manual low value repetitive activities.

If you are interested in learning more you can book a discovery call with one of our subject experts or read more about this here.