Helping Accountancy firms to attract, develop and retain great staff to provide the best service to their clients
Melanie has been working with our team for the past 12 months, both for one to one coaching at career or life transition points and our office wide wellbeing workshops. She has made a discernible impact on the team, raising the level of self-understanding and resilience. She is able to translate her practical experiences in finance into both pragmatic advice but also importantly is able to have true empathy of their roles and challenges. She has provided some valuable insight. On a professional note working with her has been pleasure, she being both very efficient and responsive and responding to feedback
Melanie has been working 1:1 with members of my Saffery Peterborough team over the last year. She has helped those qualified preparing for promotion to Assistant Manager and recently promoted to Manager positions making the difficult transition to management. She has supported them to build their own self-awareness and self-confidence to achieve their potential. The focus has been on helping them become well-rounded finance professionals. We wanted someone to work with the people and invest time in them. The sessions are confidential to the mentee and have been really well received by the team.
Melanie is ideally placed to work with the our people having worked in the profession and industry in Accounting & Finance, as well as her current capacity of coach and mentor to accountants and finance professionals.
On the back of the success to date, we have extended the mentoring scheme as it is a key part of our commitment to our people.
Melanie has been working with theGrogroup delivering some really useful insights into motivation using a Motivation Maps tool that divides up into 9 motivators. What is so useful is that once the report has been reviewed with an individual, the system can ‘map the team’. This weights everybody motivators and shows the ‘balance’ of motivators in a team which highlights the reasons for peculiar dynamics – when some people have very different personal motivators to the team overall. A bit like a fish swimming in a different direction.
Melanie is professional and responsive. A joy to work with.
Melanie came to work with our office team of 6 following a recommendation from an associate.
We all completed the Motivational Maps questionnaire beforehand and Melanie then worked with us a group and one to one to discuss the results.
Melanie is a great coach, explaining with clarity and giving straightforward potential solutions.
Would not hesitate to recommend Melanie to work with individuals or teams.
Staff training hadn’t been a priority over the last few years (affected in part by the pandemic). And yet trainees had continued to be taken on during this time.
The client had recognised the need that while technical training and on-the-job training are important, there was also a gap in terms of “soft skills” among staff.
Soft skills are a bit of are a misnomer and actually essential to help development of well-rounded finance professionals and delivery of quality client service. Two programmes were designed and delivered: Soft Skills for Juniors and Soft Skills for Seniors, appropriate to their needs and stage of development.
Initially used in Audit, but since expanded to outer parts of the firm including Accounts, Insolvency and Tax. These now form an ongoing part of the firm’s training programme.
It had been a long, challenging period with lots of change. Partly planned changes, but also the unplanned type that inevitably crops up from time to time to provide additional excitement.
Knowing that staff had dealt with a lot and coped well and yet knowing that there was still more change to come, the client wanted me to recognise this and ensure that staff were suitably equipped. I designed a training session which recognised the changes experienced to date and how well they’d managed and supported others through this. It also looked forwards to the future and explained the concepts of the Change Curve Resilience and Circle of influence to help the deal with whatever changes present in the future. The client was delighted with the results.
When we think about accountants, we don’t always automatically focus on the people side of things. Yet as people are 100% involved in the delivery of services quality and value, people really are firm’s greatest asset.
It’s wonderful to see this focus with Saffery’s Peterborough office. Since mid-2021 I’ve been involved in a two-pronged approach, working with individuals 1:1 as well as with groups.
I’ve helped individuals either preparing for promotion or expanding into their newly promoted roles.
I run my Essential Skills Workshops (and a few other relevant titles including Procrastination, Emotional Intelligence and Self-Care) on a fortnightly basis under their wellness initiative.
A great example of a firm investing in their people.
Leep Accountants is an owner-managed business with four employees. The team is still relatively new, having been formed in 2018 with employees joining at different stages as the business has grown. A fifth member is currently out on maternity leave.
Staffing changes can have a big impact the dynamics of the team, especially a small one.
I used Motivational Maps with the Leep Accountants team, starting with the Polly, the owner, before extending to the other team members.
Motivational Maps helps us to understand what motivates each person and their satisfaction against each of their drivers.
I then pulled the individuals’ data into a Team Report.
Team Reports clearly demonstrates the team dynamics as well as any areas in need of attention.
A few interesting points were highlighted which we were able to discuss within the team forum. Some different options were discussed and solutions have been agreed.
I look forward to working with this team again in the future, as their team expands and grows.
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