Developing tomorrow's top accountants
As a record number of baby boomers head toward retirement, the accounting industry must prepare itself for a major brain drain. But more than just making sure your firm is prepared for this lost experience, you need to create a learning framework to help your younger staff grow, fill the gap left by retiring senior staff, and become trailblazing accountants in their own right.
You have a great amount of control over how soon your younger staff will develop into leading accountants, and with a deliberate strategy, you can ensure your team quickly learn the right things for your firm and also for their own personal growth.
Rethink your staff's training
Every day accountants receive emails about 'technical' training of some kind—something to do with new technologies, legislative changes, or anything else that you need to keep up with in this industry.
Less heard of by accountants are 'non-technical' skills training—those soft skills such as accounting communication, teamwork, problem-solving and leadership you desire in any of your staff.
Both technical and non-technical skills are equally important to accountants, and they can be taught in two forms of training—formal and informal.
Formal training
Formal training is any channel specifically made for the intention to teach something, such as conferences, webinars, training videos and exercises. Everyone learns differently, so it's important that the formal training made available to your staff is a mix in terms of content and delivery.
Do you attend conferences and talks? You should allow time for your employees to attend them as well to maintain a balance of internal and external training.
It's also important for your staff to look outside of the industry for education. There are lessons to be found in other industries that can benefit them and your firm, such as how some cafés encourage customer loyalty. Or how airline carriers handle a surge in customer numbers. Can your firm learn anything from these industries?
Informal training
Informal training is less structured and can happen at any time—on the job, in the lunch room, personal reading, or sharing between co-workers (more on that next).
Document a plan that identifies the mandatory and optional training you will make available for your staff that covers technical and non-technical skills. To really encourage learning and support your staff in their pursuit of education, you need to consider the value in formal and informal delivery.
Make a habit of sharing
Your goal should be to have a platform in place for every single one of your staff to share what they learned every day.

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