Defining your team positions and expectations is the foundation for your team members knowing what to do and how to do it. Do your team members have clear job descriptions, implementation tasks and workflow projects to keep them busy? Does your team know what to do on a daily basis? Is it clear what team members are working on, what their priorities are and whom they are working with? If your answers are no or if you’re unsure, determining these answers should be a high priority for your firm. By doing so will increase efficiency, productivity and engagement. A well-run business, from a workflow point of view, should be properly resourced and the team should be kept busy always. Team engagement and collaboration improves when the team roles are clearly defined and well understood by everyone in the business.

Usually, businesses focus too much time on defining the approach to achieve goals rather than defining position descriptions. Leaving the goals approach somewhat ambiguous allows for more creativity, time and energy invested in collaboration. A lack of clarity within team roles increases the time and energy wasted dealing with tasks that don’t matter or don’t fall under their position.

When team roles are identified and bounded, it allows members to do a significant amount of work independently.  With clearly defined roles and responsibilities, everyone knows what to do and what’s expected of them. They know how to behave, what they need to accomplish and how to reach the firm’s goals. You will also see an improvement in efficiency and accountability throughout your team. Knowing what to do ensures everything that needs to be completed gets done. If team members don’t know what to do, no one will know who is responsible for the little tasks to complete a project.

After clearly defining team roles and responsibilities, take a good look at your induction process and ongoing training process. When someone joins your team, what happens within the first week? What are the ongoing soft-skills, not just technical-based, training programs you offer? Let’s say you hire an eight-year experienced, superstar accountant. Just because the accountant has experience doesn’t mean he/she will know how your business operates. Again, you have to define those team roles and responsibilities to more effectively manage your team and business.

Our Magnify membership program has helped Accounting firms around the world develop and implement marketing strategies that delivers results. You too can achieve this for your firm and so much more. Learn more about what Magnify can do for you.