Are you or your employees feeling tired, exhausted, overwhelmed, and stressed due to the massive changes we have faced over the past few years? With having to adjust how we work, recent tax law changes, and the injection of 87,000 new IRS employees to conduct massive audits, more CPAs will become fatigued and potentially leave our profession. It’s conceivable to see an increase in employee burnout. With the decline in CPAs in our field, now is the time to evaluate your firm internally to ensure your staff remains motivated and eager to learn. With the accounting industry facing a decline in new graduates, avoiding employee burnout and keeping you and your staff motivated is immensely critical to retaining your quality, valued employees.
How do we keep our staff engaged and motivated despite feeling exhausted?
As CPAs, it used to be we were extremely busy for 3 months (February, March, and April), and then we could take some time off; however, now it seems like there is no break.
Is there a way to eliminate employee burnout?
To gain more valuable insight into this issue, I met with Dr. Ayelet Fishbach and Professor Francesca Gino.
According to Dr. Fishbach, one key to keep staff motivated and avoid burnout is by celebrating and acknowledging our accomplishments. With all the changes that have occurred over the past few years, it is easy for your employees to become defeated and unmotivated. Through setting realistic, measurable goals, your employees will be given the opportunity to re-evaluate progress and see their accomplishments. Through realizing their achievements, they will become motivated and encouraged for the future. Incentives can foster motivation as well. My organization provides team bonuses, instead of individual ones, which I have found cultivates a positive, team-oriented environment, leading to improved productivity and efficiency.
Another key to reducing burnout is to drive staff success by embracing curiosity. I am naturally curious and driven with a desire to learn. I am a life-long learner that constantly reads and strives to expand my knowledge base. Oftentimes, I embrace change and see it as an opportunity to be better and learn. Modeling this behavior helps facilitate this same energy and culture in my firm and most successful firms extrude that same energy and culture. According to research conducted by Professor Gino, when people stay curious they perform better and are more engaged.
As CPAs, are we way underutilized in our profession?
Yes, we may be tired and stressed about the changes occurring, but we should not be afraid and fear change as we should see it as an opportunity to learn and grow, which in turn, will motivate our staff and ourselves to have something to look forward to in the future. This helps your employees become excited for opportunities and the future. We as CPAs can embrace change, especially in technology and automation. Through embracing technology and automation, we will be able to automate tasks (tax returns), which will afford us time to grow, learn, consult, and truly make a difference in our professional, personal, and clients’ lives.
As with change, there are times where we all make mistakes. We must understand that everyone makes mistakes, and no one is immune. What we should do is learn from our mistakes. This helps us to grow, be more efficient, and take ownership of the solution. Yes, as CPAs, we tend to always like to be right, but the challenge is to not fear being wrong. We must understand that learning happens when we make mistakes. In my organizations, one of our values is to “break it”. Some of my employees have a tough time with it. It’s easy at times to fix problems ourselves, however, when we do that, we ruin the ability for the person to learn from their mistake. Staff in our organizations, have grown faster because we have them come up with a solution to a problem and have them learn to solve the problem themselves. As an advisor, we have to be able to solve problems.
The takeaway here is to continue to look for opportunities and don’t be afraid of change. This will help reinvigorate your employees, leading to decreased burnout and improved motivation, and employee retention.
If you would like to learn more strategies for improving your CPA firm, contact the WealthAbility® Network and schedule a call today!