Accounting
The power of immediate feedback at your accounting firm
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We all love our pets, but we sometimes forget to reward them promptly for the positive behaviors we’re encouraging.
Take dogs, for instance. Studies show the longer we wait to reward our pups for a behavior, the less effective the training becomes. Even waiting five or 10 seconds to praise Roscoe for being a “good boy” can diminish the learning effect. He’ll be very confused if you wait until the next morning to reward him with a biscuit. And if he happens to be barking at the postal carrier at the time, he’ll think he should get a biscuit every time he barks at the postal carrier. That’s not the behavior you want to reward.
The same is true for our team members. If we wait for the annual or quarterly review to give them feedback about their performance, it’s ancient history by then and doesn’t carry much weight. Instead, let’s think about ways to shorten the feedback cycle to create more consistent behaviors in our firms. It could simply be public praise as in: “We received excellent feedback from our client 20 minutes ago. Great job, Sarah!”
Sarah worked late several evenings last week to track down a traveling senior partner so he could resolve a complex client issue. However, if the firm didn’t acknowledge Sarah’s effort promptly, she (and her colleagues) would assume they didn’t appreciate the extra effort. Mentioning the extra effort at her next formal review wouldn’t mean much, either.
As a firm leader you have hundreds of opportunities every week to give positive feedback to your team. By giving out kudos and rewards in small frequent doses, you build positive momentum. It’s a great way to keep your team motivated and engaged because it shows you’re paying close attention to their efforts. Compare this approach to what most of us default to: We wait until the annual or quarterly review to acknowledge our team’s efforts. That’s not soon enough, and the message won’t sink in.
The same is true for compensation. You may want to pay a talented person way above market rate to join your firm. The pay bump might get them in the door, but it won’t keep them motivated and engaged once they’re onboard. To keep them motivated and aligned with the firm’s vision during their tenure, you’ll need to provide consistent, real-time feedback.
Suppose a team member stepped up and tackled a thorny challenge that no one else at the firm wanted to deal with. That’s huge. Their efforts should be celebrated ASAP in front of the whole firm. You could give the team member a gift card to a great restaurant or a store they like. Or you could give them a company credit card and tell them to put a nice meal on it with their significant other. Everyone else will get the message: “OK, this is what the firm is paying attention to.” Don’t wait until their quarterly or annual review to show your appreciation.
Creating micro-feedback
Start by making it a point to keep your ear to the ground. Make sure everyone on the team knows you’re paying close attention to all the small wins that are occurring daily. You can even use tools like Bonusly to help you keep track of those wins and reward team members points for their efforts. Like pets, humans are trainable. Figure out which types of positive behaviors you’re trying to drive and then incentivize your team with micro-rewards along with prompt, clear feedback. That way, your organization is continually learning and teaching. I’ve found it’s the best way to create engagement when people clearly understand what firm leaders are paying attention to.
The great thing about accounting firms is that almost everything your people do is tracked. It should be easy to find all kinds of little wins that add up to positive momentum. Unfortunately, too many of these wins go unnoticed and just get rolled into the employees’ annual billing total.
As the old saying goes: “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” When Friday rolls around, if a team member had an amazingly productive week, make sure they are publicly praised and receive a mini reward such as a $200 gift card. If you think about it, giving out 50 weekly gift cards at $200 each is equivalent to a $10,000 year-end bonus. However, the gift cards come with a bigger kicker — public acknowledgment. You can’t put a price tag on that. Which type of “bonus” do you think will keep team members more motivated?
The key is to commit to finding ways to reinforce the behaviors that you want faster and more consistently. By the time you get to quarterly or annual reviews, you’re not reinforcing anything. You’re just rehashing something that happened in the distant past. It’s not a good use of your team or the team member’s time.
Addressing negative behavior promptly
The same approach works for negative behaviors you’re trying to correct. If you see someone engaging in negative behavior, that needs to be addressed promptly as well. When it comes to correcting negative behavior, however, you want to deal with that privately, discreetly and very clearly. Public praise can be enormously effective for building a high-performing firm. Public humiliation can be toxic.
If you see positive behavior that you want to see more of, don’t hesitate to make it a huge deal. Don’t hesitate to overdo it with accolades and praise for team members who go above and beyond. You’ll get more back than you ever imagined possible, and it will make you feel good about yourself, too. It’s not so much about the reward itself; it’s about when you dish out the reward.
What is your firm doing to provide faster, more meaningful feedback to team members? I’d
The House unanimously passed four bipartisan bills Tuesday concerning taxes and the Internal Revenue Service that were all
- H.R. 1152, the Electronic Filing and Payment Fairness Act, sponsored by Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Illinois, Suzan Delbene, D-Washington, Randy Feenstra, R-Iowa, Brad Schneider, D-Illinois, Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pennsylvania and Jimmy Panetta, D-California. The bill would apply the “mailbox rule” to electronically submitted tax returns and payments to allow the IRS to record payments and documents submitted to the IRS electronically on the day the payments or documents are submitted instead of when they are received or reviewed at a later date. The AICPA believes this would offer clarity and simplification to the payment and document submission process while protecting taxpayers from undue penalties.
- H.R. 998, the Internal Revenue Service Math and Taxpayer Help Act, sponsored by Rep. Randy Feenstra, R-Iowa, and Brad Schneider, D-Illinois, which would require notices describing a mathematical or clerical error to be made in plain language, and require the Treasury to provide additional procedures for requesting an abatement of a math or clerical error adjustment, including by telephone or in person, among other provisions.
- H.R. 517, the Filing Relief for Natural Disasters Act, sponsored by Rep. David Kustoff, R-Tennessee, and Judy Chu, D-California. The process of receiving tax relief from the IRS following a natural disaster typically must follow a federal disaster declaration, which can often come weeks after a state disaster declaration. The bill would provide the IRS with authority to grant tax relief once the governor of a state declares either a disaster or a state of emergency and expand the mandatory federal filing extension under Section 7508(d) of the Tax Code from 60 days to 120 days, providing taxpayers with more time to file tax returns after a disaster.
- H.R. 1491, the Disaster related Extension of Deadlines Act, sponsored by Rep. Gregory Murphy, R-North Carolina, and Jimmy Panetta, D-California, would extend the amount of time disaster victims would have to file for a tax refund or credit (i.e., the lookback period) by the amount of time afforded pursuant to a disaster relief postponement period for taxpayers affected by major disasters. This legislative solution would place taxpayers on equal footing as taxpayers not impacted by major disasters and would afford greater clarity and certainty to taxpayers and tax practitioners regarding this lookback period.
“The AICPA has long supported these proposals and will continue to work to advance comprehensive legislation that enhances IRS operations and improves the taxpayer experience,” said Melanie Lauridsen, vice president of tax policy and advocacy for the AICPA, in a statement Tuesday. “We are pleased to work closely with each of these Representatives on common-sense reforms that will benefit taxpayers, tax practitioners and tax administration and we’re encouraged by their passage in the House. We look forward to continuing to work with Congress to improve the taxpayer experience.”
The bills were also included in a recent Senate
The House also passed two other tax-related bills Tuesday that weren’t endorsed in the recent AICPA letter.
- H.R. 1155, Recovery of Stolen Checks Act, sponsored by Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-New York, would require the IRS to create a process for taxpayers to request a replacement via direct deposit for a stolen paper check. If a check is determined to be stolen or lost, and not cashed, a taxpayer will receive a replacement check once the original check is cancelled, but many taxpayers are having their replacement checks stolen as well. Taxpayers who have a check stolen are then unable to request that the replacement check be sent via direct deposit. The bill would require the Treasury to establish processes and procedures under which taxpayers, who are otherwise eligible to receive an amount by paper check in replacement of a lost or stolen paper check, may elect to receive such amount by direct deposit.
- H.R. 997, National Taxpayer Advocate Enhancement Act, sponsored by Rep. Randy Feenstra, R-Iowa, would prevent IRS interference with National Taxpayer Advocate personnel by granting the NTA responsibility for its attorneys. In advocating for taxpayer rights, the National Taxpayer Advocate often requires independent legal advice. But currently, the staff members hired by the National Taxpayer Advocate are accountable to internal IRS counsel, not the Taxpayer Advocate, creating a potential conflict of interest to the detriment of taxpayers. The bill would authorize the National Taxpayer Advocate to hire attorneys who report directly to her, helping establish independence from the IRS.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Missouri, applauded the bipartisan House passage of the various bills, which had been unanimously passed by the committee.
“President Trump was elected on the promise of finally making the government work better for working people,” Smith said in a statement Tuesday. “This bipartisan legislation helps fulfill that mandate and makes improvements to tax administration that will make it easier for the American people to file their taxes. Those who are rebuilding after a natural disaster particularly need help filing taxes, which is why this set of bills lightens the load for taxpayers in communities struck by a hurricane, tornado or some other disaster. With Tax Day just a few days away, we must look for common-sense, bipartisan ways to make filing taxes less of a hassle.”
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