While stress may historically be a seasonal expectation in the tax and accounting profession, continuously being overworked can lead to accounting burnout. Implement automation solutions to reduce manual tasks and prevent the feelings that could result in low productivity, quiet quitting, or even resignations. It may seem as though the Great Resignation and quiet quitting are holding hands these days, but they don’t have to take a walk all over your workforce.
Review the Main Motivators
Overlooking or ignoring what matters to people can drive staff to cope – through minimal performance or even departure. Meaningful motivation comes when you know what motivates your staff. Implementing processes and procedures that enhance their work experience creates staying power.
A Fortune article recently cited a survey which highlighted five things desired by employees:
- Compensation
- Meaningful work
- Flexibility – hybrid/remote work options
- Career opportunities
- Recognition
The SafeSend Suite™ tax workflow automation platform can help your firm address these points within your firm and even enhance the client experience along the way!
Defining a Healthy Work-Life Balance
Balance begins with healthy expectations and flexibility. Historic doesn’t always qualify as healthy. Ebenezer Scrooge’s expectations may be historical, but Bob Cratchit is certainly not remembered for having a healthy work-life balance.
The historic expectation of busy season for tax and accounting professionals has nearly always been one of unavailability for family, friends – and often sleep. Working 60-80 hours or more per week was not shocking, it was customary. Review your firm’s processes and procedures. What does a healthy work-life balance look like for those in the tax department? With the right workflow, accounting burnout can be banished.
Replace Accounting Burnout with Satisfaction
Ramping up for busy season is commonplace in the tax and accounting profession. But if accounting burnout has already impacted your staff, addressing the situation immediately can turn things around before tax season is in full swing.
SafeSend Returns®, the core of the SafeSend Suite, is a multi-year winner of the CPA Practice Advisor Technology Innovation Award and has redefined the way accounting firms digitally assemble, securely deliver, and quickly capture e-signatures from clients for completed tax return packages. Automating the last mile of the tax engagement frees up staff to focus on more meaningful work. Substituting your staff’s repetitive tasks with those which can lead to recognition and career opportunities is one way to reduce weariness and replace it with staffing satisfaction.
Simple and Straightforward
When it comes to the tax engagement, every client touchpoint benefits from automation processes on both the firm and the client side with the SafeSend Suite. If simplifying processes for your staff would put a smile on their faces, think of how much your clients will appreciate a smooth, simple, familiar tax experience. Putting the right tax workflow automation platform in place in advance helps remove the peaks and valleys of busy season.
From engagement letters to extensions to unlimited e-sign all year long, scale down your tech stack and consolidate processes to reduce staffing stress as well as save time and money for your firm.
Show Appreciation with Automation
How can you ensure your staff feel appreciated? Meaningful work in a flexible environment is possible with the SafeSend Suite. The cloud-based workflow automation platform allows staff to work easily from any location. Plus, tracking and reporting features eliminate the need for manual tracking of where all your clients are in the review process.
Another piece of the streamlined workflow, SafeSend Extensions™, allows your firm to send extension packages to clients in minutes. Tracking and payment options are available as well. The same, familiar look and feel across the entire tax engagement ensures both staff and clients can easily adopt the process and benefit from the standard experience across the SafeSend Suite.
Stay ahead of quiet quitting by implementing the all-in-one solution of the SafeSend Suite tax automation platform. Streamlining your processes will not only reduce accounting burnout, but side effects may include peace, happiness, work-life balance, efficiency, error reduction, and increased client satisfaction.
Schedule Your SafeSend Suite Demo Today
SafeSend Returns is the flagship solution in the SafeSend Suite and a multi-year winner of the CPA Practice Advisor Technology Innovation Award. SafeSend Returns eliminates the manual, labor-intensive elements many tax departments experience producing client-ready tax returns.