Team

Core Competencies

• Excellent communicator (written, telephone & face to face)

• Attention to detail

• Able to resolve problems independently

• Proficiency with technology

• Gets things done efficiently

• Have a positive & optimistic attitude

• A curiosity to understand and learn (e.g. asking why & how)

• Enthusiastic about helping people

Our Culture

The ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society

Continuous Learning & Self improvement

• You overhear a colleague trying to resolve an issue and you are unsure of the answer. To increase your knowledge, you try to help them resolve the issue or you make a note to ask your team member how they resolved it later.

• You embrace feedback and act on it. You don’t take the feedback personally and see it as an opportunity to learn.

• You learn from your mistakes & endeavour to not make the same mistake going forward.

• You don’t understand something and so spend a bit of time researching it. You then ask you colleague a question to test that your understanding is correct - there are no silly questions.

• You regularly keep up to date with changes in the accountancy world. For example, reading accounting web articles or articles about the budget and think about how this might impact some of your clients. You raise any important talking points with team members.

• You take responsibility for your own learning and development, identifying training courses/webinars etc that may be suitable and speaking to your manager about them.

Business DEVELOPMENT

• You notice that we are preparing a piece of work manually and suggest moving it on to a digital format therefore saving time.

• You ask why we are doing something a certain way and question is there a better way?

• You take a few hours to look into whether there is a better way of doing something.

• You are using the working papers and you notice an error or something is missing. You adjust the working papers to make them better.

• You provide a great service and ask your client to leave a review.

• You are actively engaged in team meetings.

• You provide ideas on how we can improve the way we do things in your monthly meetings.

Work ethic & Accountability

• You complete your work quickly & efficiently.

• You prioritise older or urgent jobs first rather than easier ones.

• You flag any issues that could cause delays to your manager.

• You are asked to do a task and you follow it through until conclusion.

• You know you will run out of work in the next day or so and proactively ask for more work.

• You keep your practice management and timesheet up to date on a daily basis.

• You help a client by showing them how to improve their record keeping. This takes a bit of time now but will make the job easier for years to come!

• You’re on hold to the HMRC helpline. Whilst you wait, you get on with some other work.

• The internet goes down. You make sure someone is contacting the broadband provider to resolve the issue and you hotspot off the work mobile phone.

• You keep the schedule up to date and email your weekly plan at the end of the week.

Client relationships

• You take the initiative to call a client who is sending quite a few queries back and forth over email. This saves our time and also any misunderstandings. It also improves our client service.

• You ask a client how their day is going and you engage in a conversation that is non work related.

• You aim to action all emails within 2 working days. If the answer may take longer then you send a holding email to the client.

• You go out of your way to let a client know that their records are really good.

• You finish a job and spend some time thinking about how you can help the client.

• When giving a client bad news, you are empathetic and try to give the news to them over the phone or in person if possible.

• A client urgently needs their accounts for a mortgage. You ring them every couple of days to keep them up to date on where we are with their accounts.

• You add an account in a clients software and set up a bank rule so that transactions go straight to this account making things more accurate and saving the client time. Its important that you communicate the value that you’ve provided as most of what we do is perceived value.

• A client calls the office and asks for a team member that isn’t available. You ask them if there is anything you can help with.

• You explain something complicated via email and invite them to book in some time with you should they need any further help.

Team player

• You see that the kitchen is messy and needs tidying so you do the washing up.

• You notice that your colleague needs help and you make time for them.

• You see that a colleague looks stressed so you ask them how they are and if you can do anything to help them with their workload.

• You know you are going to be away for a week and ask another team member to cover any important duties whilst you are away.

• Hosted Desktop is running slowly for everyone and so you contact Hosted to resolve the issue.

• You try to resolve problems on your own. If you are unable to resolve it or need further guidance, you try to go to your manager with a solution as to what you would do.

• You provide timely feedback in person to others.

• You actively engage in team meetings.

Work quality

• You ensure that your work is to a high standard.

• You learn from any errors that you make.

• You review your own work thoroughly before it goes to your manager to reduce review points.

Mental Wellbeing

• We encourage you to talk to a colleague if you're feeling stressed.

• You aim to take regular 5min breaks throughout the day and at least a 30min lunch break.

• When you're on holiday, you turn on your ‘out of office’ and try to fully switch off.

• You don't regularly work late.

• You regularly give yourself the opportunity to get over seven hours sleep per night.

• You have some things happening in your personal life that may affect you at work and raise these with your manager.

• If you feel overwhelmed at work, speak to a manager or a team member about it.

• You try not to answer emails in the evenings and weekends, unless absolutely necessary.

• Optional extras (these are not required but are fantastic for your health and mental wellbeing):

  • You eat non processed food as much as you can (i.e. processed food generally doesn't resemble what it originally was).

  • You exercise at least 3 times per week.

  • You practice mindfulness.

  • You are encouraged to get involved in team events (Monday lunch club, games night).

Attitude

Attitude is the number one thing we look for in a team member. Work hard, be enthusiastic & have a willingness to learn and improve. We are looking for team members with an ‘above the line’ attitude.