When you and your team have conquered the annual accounts and tax returns for the year, it’s time to tackle the annual meetings, and ideally, the entire team would work through the process.

But in the real world, we hear that while members and partners are comfortable handling the annual meetings, often their staff don’t necessarily know what to do, leaving the meetings the responsibility of the higher-level team. This reduces the strength of the team and is one of the many reasons you should empower your entire team to manage annual meetings.

Why Train Your Team to Handle Accounting Annual Meetings?

Reduce Strain on Yourself

The first and most obvious reason is that it will reduce the strain on yourself and your higher-level team in a very busy time.

Improve Customer Service

With more people handling the annual meetings, more time and attention can be paid to each customer.

Clients are Expecting More

The days of just producing work accounts are over. Clients are expecting more from their accountants, including clear, face-to-face communication.

Upskill Staff

It can form an important part of building up the experience of your team, which can feed into your succession planning in case you’re incapacitated or have the pleasure of extended leave.

What is Holding People Back?

There could be a combination of reasons people are hesitant to take on the annual meeting.

The Nature of Accounting

Accounting, especially in its traditional form, involves significant solitary work. It requires attention to detail, concentration, and long hours spent with numbers and data. These tasks often favour those who thrive in quiet, focused environments.

Historical Role of Accounting

Historically, accountants were not front-facing members of a business. We worked behind the scenes, and, unlike sales or public relations, our roles didn't require constant interaction with people.

No Training

Typically, interpersonal and communication skills are not something accountants are trained in, with the focus more on technical skills.

The end result is that we end up with a pipeline of talent that wants to be head down, punching out work.

But the Environment is Changing

We’re currently going through an evolution of the public accountant. Technology is taking over manual tasks. For example, the traditional job of coding up a bank statement with the cloud-based single ledger doesn’t take anywhere near as much time as it once did.

On the plus side, this allows you to choose the role for you and your team going forward, and compliance advisory services are well within the accounting wheelhouse.

There are many advisory areas you can enter, including:

• Best business structures,
• Estate planning,
• Tax planning.
• Cash flow,
• Succession planning,
• Asset Protection,
• CGT,
• Tax impact of SMSF, and
• Tech and process automation.

However, advising requires the soft skills of communication and business acumen. The good news is that your staff already have the technical skills, they just need the way to frame it to your clients.

How to Build Soft Skills

Building the soft skills of your team will be a time-consuming and perhaps uncomfortable task, but one that will pay dividends for you.

Create a Culture of Learning and Growing

Start by ensuring you’re creating a culture of learning and growing for all of your employees. Make sure they know it’s okay to say “I don’t know” and where to find the answer, and role model the conduct you want to see.