Month: December 2021

Building a positive workplace culture for employees is extremely important. Amid the pandemic, organizations have understood the importance of employees’ well-being and have made their workplace culture flexible. Also, organizations are now prioritizing and focusing more on building a workplace environment in which employees feel safe, inspired, and more productive. Focusing on creating a positive and strong work environment will ensure business growth.

In many organizations, employees have excessive work pressures due to multiple deadlines. This affects their mental capacity and often results in burnout. Therefore, organizations must have proper communication with their employees, motivate them, and define the company’s goals and strategies clearly.

Importance of positive workplace culture

Every company is unique and has a different workplace culture. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all template that all organizations need to follow. Workplace culture defines a proper way in which the organization works and how people will behave. This must include your organization’s core values, beliefs formed by the management and leaders. Internal communicators of an organization must communicate these beliefs to all employees to align them with your organization’s vision.

The important reason to build a strong workplace culture is what makes it separate from the successful and average organizations. Furthermore, having a positive culture in the workplace is vital to inculcate a sense of pride and motivation among employees for the hard work and dedication they are doing for the organization. As result, employees will manage to work more efficiently and create more business opportunities for organizations and increased profits. Engaging employees, building workplace relations with effective communication can substantially contribute to employees as well as organization growth.

The organization’s internal communication department must step up and ensure that they are communicating with employees either digitally or in person. Employees must be engaged with the internal activities happening, what new strategies are being implemented and where the company is heading in the future. Employees must be given the flexibility to have access to information from any device and at any time. It is essential to resonate with your employees so that they are able to understand your vision and mission. Leaders, managers, and internal communicators are responsible to bring all employees on one page. Moreover, keeping your entire workplace connected will improve teamwork among employees. Therefore, you should have an easy approach to build a strong and positive workplace culture for your employees and ultimately achieve your business goals.

As you manage your monthly business finances and work towards achieving your financial milestones, it is always a good idea to conduct an annual financial review. This will help analyze your performance and then make adjustments to your financial plan.

For this purpose, conducting an annual financial review is recommended. It gives you a comprehensive view of your company’s financial performance, and evaluation of your success, and identifies any loopholes in your financial strategies. More importantly, a financial review is essential to revise your implemented financial plans and readjust your priorities and goals according to current business dynamics.

Aspects covered in review

The annual financial review covers an in-depth analysis of your business, your overall finances including your income, expenses, investments, profit, saving goals, and other key points. Moreover, this process also includes detecting overall risks to your business and identifying areas that are working well or blocking your way towards achieving financial growth.

Getting professional help is recommended rather than conducting this process on your own. The reason is, a professional has comprehensive knowledge and experience of financial management. He can give new business insights and fresh perspectives which you wouldn’t be able to get on your own. Also, outsourcing financial services gives an unbiased, transparent and clear outlook of your business.

Preparing for Annual financial review

Firstly, hire a professional financial advisor, who has adequate knowledge and can help preview detailed reports for you. The next step is to provide all the relevant documents suggested by your advisor. You can review your current financial strategy and discuss your new goals with your advisor to get his recommendations. Discuss what new goals you are planning to implement, ask questions regarding your current strategies. Keep an open approach to make tweaks and changes in your strategies. Take full advantage of the professionals’ knowledge and benefit your business with an accurate financial system.

Lastly, an annual financial check is an opportunity to look at the big pictures of your company’s finances. This detailed review can help specify your short-term and long-term business goals. This process will save you from financial downturns or sudden decline in implementing plans. 

In 2020, the year began with major uncertainties. Due to the pandemic, remote working popularity skyrocketed globally. The shift to remote working happened overnight with some challenges and hurdles for many organizations. But remote working was a blessing in disguise during the pandemic. As now things are finally returning back to normal globally, what is the future of remote working? Is it here to stay or will it completely vanish from the work culture?.

Demand for remote working is still soaring. The economies have rebounded, lockdowns have ended and yet the remote job posts have not decreased. This is because people liked the idea of flexible working and remote working is still prevailing globally. This has become a popular work arrangement and companies are now changing their work culture with this new adaptation. People are also reevaluating their professional career and looking for a job where they get perks and flexibility of work. The priorities of people and companies both have changed during this time. In addition, a hybrid work approach is now adopted by many companies.

Hybrid work approach

Remote work doesn’t mean that companies are permanently closing their offices. Companies have adopted a middle ground: a hybrid work approach. This gives the freedom to employees to choose whether they want to work from the office or home. They can work at both spaces alternately depending on the work requirement. People can also decide a workplace which best suits them. This work approach doesn’t put any pressure on people as it’s not rigid and allows flexible working. Companies still prefer to have on-site meetings for building strategies, brainstorming on projects and for team building exercises. While on other days, employees can work from home on their projects as per their comfort.

What does the future hold?

Pandemic has proven that work can be done remotely and efficiently with the same level of productivity. This shows that remote working is here to stay. However, it does require new policies, improved digital infrastructure, and freeing office space. Most importantly, strict cyber security policies must be implemented to make remote work more secure and eliminate the risks permanently. Companies should consider giving training for remote working and facilitating remote workers with the right tools. Now, we will have to wait and see what new remote work developments will happen in 2022.

Planning and setting up a business is one process. But behind all this, the most important step is to build strong leadership. This is crucial because it strong leadership helps maximize business potential as well as increase profits. Whereas, weak leadership affects the productivity of the business. They eventually lose track and end up making their internal system weak. This is the reason which shows that leadership directly influences a company’s success and failure.

Leadership is not about ruling the company, but carefully working on all elements of business and working for the betterment of the company. Good leadership sets the tone of a company in how they operate their business. Also, there are different styles of leadership so it doesn’t mean one style fits all businesses. Different styles are effective for different kinds of businesses. What matters in the end is that the leaders are vigilant about all business activities and are keeping all departments on one page.

Benefits of strong business leadership

Here are the benefits of having strong leadership for your business:

Implements vision and mission

Businesses should have a clear vision and set their business goals from the start of their business. They must picture their business future, how they want to attract new stakeholders, add new services, where do they see their performance graph going. Also, it is important to regularly check if you are working to achieve your business goals and if not they get things back on track. Strong leadership ensures that the business is working towards its mission and once they achieve it, work towards sustaining it.

Initiate actions

Leaders must build effective strategies for their business and take immediate actions on them. This also means that if there are some loopholes in their business operations, they need to immediately take remedial actions to eliminate any risks and concerns for their business.

Provides guidance

Leaders and managers must be a guiding source for their employees. They must give them valuable advice, how they can improve their work. If required, they can show employees by giving a practical demonstration of work to make it easier for them. Seeing this kind of leadership support will be valued by employees and it will improve their work.

Boost employees confidence

Behind any successful business, there is a team of employees working in different departments managing all work together. Good leaders ensure that they value their employees and their hard work and dedication towards business. They want to build a positive environment for employees in which they feel comfortable working. Moreover, they boost employees’ confidence when they face any challenges which help them not lose their focus.

Provides organizational needs

Providing correct tools and resources to employees is essential. Leaders make sure that they are taking care of all organizational needs that are required for producing quality work and smooth running of business. Ultimately, all their efforts will be seen in their business performance. 

In today’s business world, frauds and risks are inevitable. The business landscape has uncertainties and unexpected internal or external challenges for owners which they were not prepared for. According to the Global fraud 2020 study, businesses lose 5% of their revenue to frauds every year. More alarmingly, the lack of implementing right controls can severely damage your business and can become a major cause of concern. Business owners must conduct a fraud risk assessment to review their business operations and do timely detection.

Fortunately, detecting fraud and other underlying risks is not a very difficult task. It will help businesses get an overview of their operations and understand their potential risks. The main purpose is to show businesses their vulnerabilities in internal and external controls and how to mitigate them. Furthermore, companies can prepare a risk management plan

Importance of Fraud Risk Assessment

Recognizing the importance of fraud risk assessment by business owners is imperative. Unfortunately, many businesses are still vulnerable to fraud risks, as they don’t take the fraud crisis seriously until they face a major fraud event. Also, it is high time that businesses must re-evaluate their risk management procedures and implement a correct risk mitigating strategy. Moreover, fraud risk assessment can not only reduce frauds but also creates significant opportunities to enhance business operations.

Effective fraud risk assessment makes a business strong and sound. Businesses that implement fraud risk mitigating strategies can benefit from the following things:

1. Timely detection of frauds
2. Quantifying risks and evaluation of their impact
3. Reduces financial losses due to fraud
4. Removes inconsistency in financial and non-financial information
5. Enhanced business efficiency and streamlined operations
6. Ensures compliance with applicable regulations
7. Increased reporting of potential frauds and other underlying risks
8. Improved employee awareness of business risk assessment

Ultimately, the responsibility comes to the management to take practical measures and improve their practices. Management must strengthen their existing fraud risk assessment strategies or implant new improved procedures. As the business grows, so do the risks of fraud. Therefore, it is a continuous process that requires multiple iterations and correct amalgamation of insight and action. Certainly, with the use of the correct tools and a professional team you can manage your fraud risk management and direct your business towards success.

The Auditing industry is evolving at an exceptional pace. The change in the auditing landscape is a smooth shift towards the latest technologies. As the business industry is making shifts at a faster pace, so do the clients’ needs. To fulfil your clients requirements, auditors need to be aware of the latest developments happening in the business and auditing industry to stay relevant. Auditors need to invest their time in adopting a new work approach to deliver, improve their skill set and provide quality experience to their clients. Moreover, audit automation has now become a necessity to adopt by auditing firms.

Audit & Technology

Inclusion of new technology is helping the business industry to streamline their work operations, remove inefficiencies, reducing errors and risks. However, the audit transformation is not only about investing but also learning to transform their business operations and work approach. With audit automation, the role of auditors is broader now in terms of adding more value in their work. The global megatrends of transformation and AI is playing a significant role in making the auditing role better as well as challenging. 

Technological advancements happening in the auditing industry are making increasing challenges for auditors. Due to higher expectations and scrutiny, demands of clients are higher. Therefore, auditors must be agile and client focused. Work on the technologies that provide tailored, insightful and efficient work to clients. Maintain consistent audit standards to maintain their business ethics and how they operate. Focus should always remain on providing high quality audit reports which are trusted by their clients and the market. Furthermore, it is highly important to continue investing in new technologies and help shape the future of audit.

Future of Auditors

Auditors must focus on building a unique skill set using new technologies, understand its working and improve data visualizations. Auditors must do a comparison of their previous work approach with today’s and analyze what difference they can make by using technology. Most importantly, auditors must leverage the automation tools provided by technologies and deliver value and minimize risks. However, audit automation is essential but only where it’s needed. Correct use of technology and at the right places will only add value to your work. Auditors need to first have the correct understanding and mindset to use technology. Eventually, the end goal is to embrace the changes and use it as an advantage to improve your work in future.