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Accountabililty and reward schemes

For several years now The FD Group has been working with small to medium sized businesses in the Thames Valley providing a finance director service to help these businesses improve their bottom line.

There are many ways we can help business owners boost their profits but we often find when we go into a business that staff often have no idea what they are accountable for.

At The FD Group we believe that accountability is one of the most important concepts in business. Everyone needs to be held accountable for their actions whether it is the owner, the receptionist or the person in charge of sales.

In order to be accountable each and every person in a business needs to know what is expected of them.
Make all your staff aware of their duties and responsibilities

First they need to have a job description which outlines their duties and responsibilities. Second, there needs to be procedures in place both operational and financial to set the expectation and framework to operate in. Thirdly, there needs to be agreed objectives which should be reviewed regularly. Finally, targets need to be set and communicated.

Staff need to be accountable for carrying out their duties and responsibilities and in achieving their objectives and targets. We come across many businesses where the salesman does not have a target; or the mechanic does not know what his productivity needs to be; or the book-keeper has no deadlines for producing the monthly reports.

We ask business owners, do your staff have a job description? Do they have objectives and targets? Is there a framework of operational and financial procedures in place on how the business is to be managed? If the answer is no to these questions then the owner is not getting the most out of their greatest asset, their people. If they focus their people then they can watch the profits increase!
Reward excellence

It is also important to recognise and reward excellent performance. Many businesses fail to do this. Recognising achievement can be done simply by saying thank you, or job well done! Or it may be recognising that achievement with an award. We have been in companies where a bell is rung each time a salesman makes a sale.

Financial rewards such as bonuses are common place today. We hear about the extraordinary bonuses in the city. But using financial incentives to motivate people to excel is also common place in SMEs.

However, bonus schemes should be designed to reward exceptional performance not average performance. It is not necessarily individual performance that should be rewarded. Many businesses these days prefer to reward team performance as it reinforces the team culture that exists in many companies.

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