SBF Employees Get Tips for Building a Great Workplace at BDO Alliance Conference
For once, we left Las Vegas with far more than we came with.
What happens in Vegas shouldn’t always stay in Vegas – especially when it can help your company build a great workplace.
Last month, SBF sent eight of us there to the annual BDO Alliance Conference, to learn best practices for nurturing careers and great workplaces. The sessions were for accountants, but the lessons we took home can help anyone’s business. Employers everywhere are pulling out all the stops to recruit and retain the right people.
Creating trust at work pays off at every level, the data shows, from leadership to on-the-ground staff. The best way to solidify your company’s foundation of trust is to invest deeply in communication and transparency. We’re proud of the culture we’ve nourished at SBF, but we’re also looking forward to using some BDO suggestions going forward. These easy lifts include:
• Creating consistent spaces and opportunities for employees to ask questions and make their voices heard in a public forum.
• Maintaining a regular internal newsletter or dedicated Slack channel for keeping all employees up to date on leadership decisions.
• Increasing manager feedback beyond the biannual performance management process, while developing systems to track and improve employee growth.
• Emphasizing appreciation for team members that includes input from every level, by publicly recognizing ideas and crediting those who help improve the company, no matter how large or small the contribution.
Speakers at the BDO conference emphasized over and over again that there’s no substitute for investing in your people. When companies build genuine, positive, caring relationships with their customers and their employees, they’re far better positioned to succeed. At some point or other in all our careers, we’ve probably been told to “fake it until you make it,” but when it comes to workplace culture, only being real will help you grow.
We at SBF pride ourselves on being not just trusted accountants to our clients, but trusted advisors in general. If you need help or advice on reviving your business or simply bolstering your company’s performance, we welcome and appreciate those conversations.
That eight of us were given the chance to learn at the leading edge of this field, traveling all the to Las Vegas, speaks highly of SBF’s commitment to its employees’ growth. We can’t wait for next year — and to bring back more great ideas that will help us continue to be an industry leader.
