With many businesses cutting back on costs, it can seem like a strange time to invest in your team’s development. But, with working life changing so rapidly due to COVID-19, your team’s CPD is now more important than ever.
As accountants and finance professionals, our businesses and our clients are turning to us to help them quickly adapt during these times.
So, what skills should your team be developing?
1. Resilience
Resilience is what keeps us going during times of disruption. Simon Perry, a partner in PwC, defines resilience as ‘the ability of an organisation to protect against, or adapt to, short- or long-term change’. Being able to overcome and adapt to the challenges brought on by the pandemic, in both our professional and personal lives, is crucial during times of crisis.
2. Leadership
For many businesses, people are the largest cost. So it makes sense that we should apply the same rigour to our investment in them as we do to an investment in a new project or plant and equipment. Now is the time to make sure everyone in your team is aligned with your organisations’ strategy and is comfortable making difficult decisions quickly. Providing leadership to your business and clients to help them make the changes required is a key skill.
3. Communication
Communication has become key in recent months and how we communicate has changed. With lots of the population still working from home we all need to learn new skills. You may be comfortable delivering a speech in a roomful of people, but how confidently can you deliver that same presentation over a video call? These skills can be quick and easy to adopt given the right guidance.
4. Technology
Organisations need to understand and embrace the opportunities to digitalise and remain relevant to customers. Not only does technology enable us to continue doing our daily jobs from home, digital transformation of your business also helps us to increase efficiency, reduce costs, enhance quality and deliver greater customer satisfaction leading to more successful products and services. As customer needs evolve, now is the time to explore how you can better serve and interact with your customers and how the use of technology can help you and your team do this.
5. Technical
Last but not least is the ability to keep your technical finance skills up to date. With a whole raft of new regulation and initiatives, the finance team needs to understand the regulation and what it means for your own, or your clients’ business. Whichever learning provider your team uses, it is crucial for your accounting and finance team to be able to access the latest information, written by expert authors.
Now, more than ever, the learning resources available to you online need to provide you and your team with engaging materials that are relevant to each person and their role. With over 1,500 CPD resources tailored to accountants and finance professionals on a wide range of topics, an accountingcpd team subscription will help your team grow, even in the toughest of times.
Find out more about how an accountingcpd team subscription can help your team grow.
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