Show employees that you’re willing to promote. We want to grow,
and one reason you want to
grow is young people are looking for challenge and opportunity. If they see a CPA firm or any
organization that’s stagnant, that is the same size now that it was
years ago, they’re going to sit
back and say, ‘Where’s the
opportunity for me?’
We’ve always wanted to let
people believe and show them
there is opportunity.
If there is somebody (we’re
considering for promotion),
they know that we know, and
they will be recognized.
We’re not going to hold somebody back because they don’t
qualify for the right amount of
years. If they can continually
perform at higher levels, we’ll
keep moving them.
Keep the culture together. One of
the other things we do is bring
all of our employees together
once a year for a two-day event.
We pay for them, we transport
them statewide, we attempt to
talk to them and really do some
programming with respect to
what our vision is and what our
culture is.
… Even though it’s one firm,
when you have other offices,
you’re going to tend to have
some divesting of culture. You
can’t avoid that, but we try to
have a culture check often. I liaison with every office and just try
to be sure we continue to accentuate what we think are the
important parts of our culture.
Know your role in the culture. One
thing I consider to be my job is
to make sure the firm works
together as a firm rather than
individual offices.
What that does is get people
working in different offices that may not be their home office.
We encourage multiple people
from different offices working
on one client relationship. We
want them to try to share
resources and be more of an
organization rather than the
four walls that surround
Columbus or Cincinnati.
A lot of times, people get confused over management and
leadership. Management is managing people on a day-to-day
basis. I really don’t look at that
as my job. My job is to focus on
the organization in terms of the
strategy and vision, the direction, and then the people who
manage on a day-to-day basis
will hopefully manage within
those parameters we establish
in terms of vision and goals.
HOW TO REACH: SS&G Financial Services Inc., (440) 248-8787 or www.ssandg.com
