A few years ago, we brought on a client who had a wonderful experience with their in-house accountant.
After she announced she was retiring, they hired a replacement – who failed within a few months.
So they hired someone else – who again, was not a success.
Completely desperate, they brought their original accountant out of retirement. She agreed to do the job temporarily, giving them a little bit of breathing space to try to hire her replacement – for the third time…
I see this quite often. Good companies find it difficult to hire excellent staff for their finance department, and end up making horrible – and costly – mistakes.
It’s not just bad luck.
Often, the people doing the hiring have never built a finance department themselves, so they don’t know what skills and experience it takes.
The search might be spearheaded by the company owner, who understands only in general terms what the role of the accountant, bookkeeper or finance director actually involves.
They’re certainly not equipped to judge what makes someone excel in that role…
…Any more than I’m equipped to judge what might make an excellent IT specialist. Honestly, I wouldn’t have a clue!
You might try to compensate by offering more money or a better job title, hoping that will attract a better calibre of candidate. But still, the same problem remains…
You can’t build an outstanding department or hire outstanding people, if you have no idea what “outstanding” looks like.
This makes hiring for supporting functions of your business difficult at the best of times, because these are important roles and it’s expensive to get wrong.
But right now it’s even worse, because it can take months to find good people. If you make a hiring mistake, your finance department can be functioning sub-optimally for months on end. And that holds back your entire operation.
That’s how the company I mentioned earlier ended up with our Outsourced Finance Department. They finally concluded that it was a waste of resources to keep on appointing accountants who struggled…
…When we already have a well-trained, experienced finance team that could be put to work for them in minutes.
You see, as finance professionals, we do know what “good” looks like. It makes it easier for us to hire the best people, and build a top team.
Not only did this give our new client access to several accountants with a range of skills and expertise, they also accessed bookkeepers and people like me, who can act as their finance directors. It would have taken them years to build that kind of capacity on their own.
Finally, we implemented in their business all the financial systems and processes which an outstanding finance department needs to function smoothly and efficiently.
Again, why re-invent the wheel?
Outsourcing turned out to be an excellent option for them, solving their hiring problems and elevating their finance function to world-class levels in one fell swoop.
Would you like to find out whether we can do the same for you?
Hit ‘reply’ to this email or call us on 01279 647 447 to arrange a no-obligation chat about your accounting needs. We’ll get right back to you.
Warmly,
Garry
