How Can You Motivate Your Team During The Busy Tax Season?

It is tax season already. The beginning of a tax season means that it’s showtime for the Certified Public Accountants, and the show must continue. You are the star of this show, and your script keeps changing, which makes it hard to keep yourself up-to-date and focused.

5 Best Ways To Motivate Your Team During Tax Season

How to motivate your team during this busy tax season? There are many activities and steps that can motivate your team. Here are the five best ways that are crucial for success:

1. Communicate clearly with your team

Problems arise within a firm, which often could be traced back to someone’s miscommunication. Since most of your team is working from home, you need to go the extra mile to ensure your employees know what management is thinking and planning.



Firm leaders must over-communicate as most people are now managing a remote workforce. Keep in mind that communication always goes both ways. Leaders should also be good listeners. Your team’s creativity might surprise you if you seek ideas from them.

2. Set clear expectations for your team

When a person joins a firm, they want to know how the work gets done in a firm. The person wants to learn things quickly and become a valuable asset to the firm. Team members want to determine their career path and what partners expect from them in order for them to advance to senior leadership positions.



Make an effort to be a cohesive firm so that everyone can do client engagements the firm’s way. Set clear expectations for your team by communicating budgets for client engagements. It could be done through the firm’s scheduling system in larger accounting firms. Make sure you clarify working hours for your team.

3. Recognize good work by providing rewards

The annual performance feedback session is discontinued in most progressive firms. Employees now want continuous feedback, but it needs a lot more coaching, training, and mentoring from the leaders. If your team is doing a great job, don’t hesitate to ask them to stretch if necessary.



Ask some high-performing senior even before they are ready to stretch and fill in for the tax manager if you lose a manager. Partners and managers should assign challenging tasks to the team as team members learn when they get difficult assignments. Leaders should recognize good work by rewarding their hardworking employees with bonuses.

4. Create boundaries between work and life

Most firms report that their employees are now working longer hours since they started working from home. When you do your work at home, it can be difficult for you to separate the two. Discuss these things with your team and help them separate work life from personal life. Employees should designate work areas at their homes to create boundaries between work and life.

5. Demonstrate a collaborative culture

Employees will feel engaged when they are a part of a team. Working from home makes some employees feel alone and invisible. Use breakout sessions during the online meetings. In smaller groups, people feel more confident and safer about speaking up.

Take the culture virtual with a full-featured and powerful intranet. It keeps employees on the same page by providing them access to critical firm tools and information. It’s the place to reinforce the firm’s purpose and core values. Employees can use the intranet to:

• Find answers
• Learn new skills
• Share achievements with others
  

Final Thoughts

It can be relatively easy to motivate your team during this busy tax season if you put in a little bit of effort. If you follow these five tips, you can be sure to have a smooth tax season that will be over before you and your employees know it.

Contact us today, at Cartier CPA's our goal is to provide clients with the highest level of respect and quality of service.