February 28 2019

How We're Creating a Winning Culture

Administration

I was recently sent this article by an employee on what makes a winning culture? We were both excited to see that W Co has implemented most of these things over the last year, and intends to do more in 2019.

While we believe that we can always improve for ourselves, for our team, and for our clients, we do feel that we’re on the right track.

The fact that our employees understand and are invested in the W Co vision, feel like they have an opportunity to grow, and have regular meetings about their goals, is great for the internal culture we’re building.

We operate as outsourced accountants for our clients. Occasionally, we have clients that think hiring internally, rather than using an outsourced accountant, might be better in the long-run. I disagree for multiple reasons:

  1. Our culture is top notch. This means that our culture impacts our clients’ cultures. The better our culture is, the more positive our impact on our clients, and on the teams with whom we work within those clients.

  2. Turnover is expensive.  It is expensive financially because of time lost to finding and replacing employees, and time lost due to training (no one can come into a job knowing exactly what to do), not to mention salaries, severance, etc.  And, turnover is expensive to the culture of an organization. Even when the culture is pretty good, turnover will result in a hit to the culture, bringing it down a notch or two. When hiring outside of your expertise for a position that you don’t know how to manage, you have a much higher likelihood of higher turnover. We are experts in this field, so we can take away a lot of the confusion, worry, and stress of managing a business’ money. And, we have people to manage our associates – people who know the field, and know how to manage accountants.

  3. “Appreciation is essential.” In order to improve engagement, and build loyalty, employees need to feel appreciated. As many of our team can attest, working for different companies as their sole accountant, appreciation wasn’t high on the list for the “money person.” – essential, yes, but appreciated… Therefore, they weren’t often engaged with what was going on within the company itself. Unengaged employees bring down the culture. Our team is appreciated. Interestingly, they are not only appreciated by their team here at W Co, but they are also appreciated by their clients. Perhaps it is because they aren’t there all the time, so when they go above and beyond, it is truly noticed. As a result, our team is invested in W Co, and is equally invested in the clients with whom they work. 

We can’t say enough about how important a great culture is. We also know that it is ALWAYS a work in progress. We actively work to achieve this great culture every single day. We’d love an opportunity to positively impact your culture with our expertise with the financial side of your business.

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