No Pain No Gain: Using the Salary Review to Your Maximum Advantage

Now that busy season has passed, many practices are entering another ultra important season: performance and salary review season. It is arguable as to which is the greatest point of pressure during this time - determining the raise, parting with the money, analyzing the performance or delivering the review. For all of the time and pressure involved, the review process should be a great strategic planning project, but for many, it is just a mechanical and painful exercise. As they say, “No pain, no gain.” Here are some great ways to gain strong advantage from the review process:

Empower the Participants
It is important to move away from the standard mechanics of the review process to make the purpose much more relevant. Either through a survey, a meeting or both, have the staff prioritize the top 3 value points that they feel the review process should produce along with the top 3 current negatives of the process. Make the same inquiry of the owners and coordinate the results so the program can do what is truly needed – highlight specific goals for firm improvement.

Stress the Holistic
Every individual has a role and contribution to make that enriches the firm at large. Make sure that all members of your organization - administrative and professional - have goals that support the strategic plan and initiatives of the firm. Service organizations are people driven and their people need to deliver what the firm promises. In order for a firm to satisfy its strategic goals, its people must have specific responsibilities and a review process to assess them. The process should establish benchmarks for improvement that foster achievement.

Dig Deep and Be Ready to Go Deeper
Accounting firms frequently need to perform in a team mode where success is driven heavily by communication. The most critical elements of communication on a team are listening and honesty. To ensure enhanced performance, each member of your firm should prepare a self-evaluation with appropriate goals. Not only should members write their self-evaluations, they should verbally present them to their peers as well. Upon presentation, their peers should weigh-in with constructive feedback. People should express how they feel and be held accountable, while at the same time, their peers should validate the communication process. The more each member knows about his or her teammates, the better the team will perform and the better the end result will be.

Incentivize
Many people thrive with incentive. The most universal incentive is money, so that clearly needs to be part of your program. Think about some innovative approaches for financial reward. Establish your budget for pay increases and set aside a pool for targeted achievement. The achievement can be firm wide or personal. Firm wide achievements include meeting certain metrics for collections, realization, new business, peer review etc… Individual achievements are based on the goals of individuals and their relative/actual performance. Consider rewards that are money oriented but not necessarily money: extra time off, additional perks, additional technology or technology toys, family minded benefits, etc. Owners in most firms I know have a financial package with a constant draw along with ups that come from the financial achievements of the firm. It is vital to train your employees to the realities of the business world so that they become entrenched in the business of public accounting – the more owner-minded your people are, the better your firm will be.

Motivating, coaching and communicating are keys to maximizing performance. Since these are ongoing efforts, you won’t be able to look forward to the day when you no longer have to go through the review process. But if you do the right job and follow the steps outlined here, strong results will be the incentive for you to actually look forward to the process in the future.