Teamwork is essential for your accounting team to meet its deliverables and achieve its targets. Ensuring your team members are in sync with each other can help achieve the team’s objectives.

These are our tips and ideas to help your team reach those goals and objectives to operate successfully.

COMMUNICATION IS KEY

To have a team working together seamlessly, they need to have clear lines of communication. Clarify individual roles and team goals so everyone is aware of their responsibilities.

Introduce regular brainstorming sessions to discuss ideas and areas in need of improvement. A team leader should also ensure the team are clear on communication lines and decide on platforms being used (email, messaging platforms, project management applications, etc.) so no-one gets left in the dark.

LEAD, DON’T DICTATE

A team’s success lies in the quality of its leadership. As a leader, it is your responsibility to inspire your members and encourage them to succeed. Rather than dictate to your team, you should lead by example – by doing!

Have an open-door policy, making it clear you can be leaned on if obstacles arise. Demonstrate effective leadership by being committed, accountable and responsible for your work.

INSIST ON ACCURACY

This goes hand-in-hand with communication as well as good leadership. The importance of accuracy in accounting cannot be stressed enough, and regular emphasis from the top down will ensure it becomes ingrained in the team.

This is the pillar of a successful accounting department and by extension, the success of the business. Encourage review and set realistic timelines for work to be completed so team members are not struggling with producing their work, leading to potential errors.

PERSONALISE ROLES FOR EACH TEAM MEMBER

No employee is the same and each team member will differ in strengths and abilities. Carry out an ‘audit’ to see where each team member has specific strengths or areas of interest, and enhance their roles based on their capabilities.

Set clear job roles for each team member with well-defined objectives. By doing this, we are giving each team member personal goals as well as team goals to focus on, making it easier to understand how vital their contribution is to the bigger picture.

A COMMON CULTURE & GOAL

The most effective teams share a common culture, but sometimes a culture can be decided unconsciously. It is a good idea to provide guidelines to your team, so the common culture is conscious, clear and moving in the right direction.

Clear goals are also important. They may be achieving a financial target or delivering on a specific project. Whatever it may be, setting clear objectives and making sure that everybody is cohesive will help your team contribute to this goal.

DON’T BE AFRAID TO EXPERIMENT

Too much routine can lead to things becoming stale. Do not be afraid to take the advice of your team members if there is room for improvement in an area and experiment with new ways of trying things.

PRACTICE GRATITUDE

A thank you goes a long way! Acknowledge individual and team achievements. A simple end-of-week email or Zoom call to break down the small successes of the week is a great idea to maintain good morale in the team.

To speak with a specialist consultant, contact Armont Recruitment on +353 1 556 3399 or hello@armont.ie