Inside Job
In-house training programs offer many options, benefits.
Empowering tax and accounting practitioners starts with education programs designed to teach best practices and relevant topics, as well as illuminate critical regulatory matters. This allows professionals to remain current — and competitive. While adverse economic conditions may be cause for reducing or even eliminating training programs, experts contend that the key to keeping practitioners informed and enthusiastic requires an unwavering focus on education and personal development.
“With the current economic downturn and increased job insecurity, employees will look to leaders to show them the way; therefore, managers must find a way to keep employees motivated and fully engaged,” writes Elizabeth McCrea Theodore in Training magazine.
Keeping employees engaged can be accomplished with public training or in-house training. In the public accounting industry, the last decade has shown a push toward in-house training, largely because employers realized they could better control consistency and specificity.
“When I first started in the CPE business in the ’80s, very few firms offered training in house — almost all training was done off site,” says Barbara Marino, senior director of in-house CPE and business development for Thomson Reuters. “Now, as much as 75 percent of live practitioner training is done in house. That’s a pretty big change.”
The popularity of in-house training for tax and accounting practitioners is illustrated by the recent requirement that firms implement risk assessment standards. “Hundreds of firms have asked us if an instructor can come into their place of business to help implement the standards and adopt risk-based auditing,” Marino says. “Clients say that real-world training has helped them integrate what they need in terms of their processes.”
While outside training provides opportunities for networking, social interaction and even a peek into what other firms are doing, in-house training offers numerous benefits to firms and practitioners.
Customized Classes: Training can be customized to meet the specific needs of your staff, and the tools and practices of your firm can be integrated into the training. This gives firms greater opportunity to shape the curriculum, Marino says.
Targeted Training: To remain relevant, training can be geared toward the specific services your firm provides. You also can avoid covering areas where your staff is not actively involved with clients. “In-house training tends to be more engaging, real-world applicable and business-driven,” Marino explains.
Cost Reduction: In addition to direct costs such as transportation, lodging and meals, in-house training mitigates the number of billable hours lost due to employees being on the road to attend off-site training sessions.
Message Consistency: With in-house training, you can be sure that the entire staff will receive the same message at the same time, allowing everyone to get on the same page. In-house training eliminates the possibility that employees will be exposed to disparate training from numerous trainers, Marino explains.
Greater Economy and Efficiency: For teams with at least eight to 10 people, in-house training will generally be less expensive than a public seminar or conference. However, training that covers specialized topics needed only by a few staff members may be more efficiently handled publically, Marino says.
Firms committed to offering practitioners timely, high-quality training are well advised to build a total in-house training program that integrates multiple formats, such as instructor-led seminars, partner-led seminars and interactive learning via webinars and audio conferences, Marino notes. “Regardless of the format, the goal of any in-house training program should be to help practitioners gain competency in specific areas where they need professional development.”
The most important step toward creating an in-house program is to evaluate the staff’s experience, capabilities, training needs and learning competencies.
“This will help spot any learning gaps and enable (firms) to plot out learning paths for all practitioners. Then (firms) can populate learning paths using training products available in the marketplace — whether live, instructor-led programs or interactive audio, video and online programs,” Marino says.
Thomson Reuters offers comprehensive in-house CPE training solutions at various price points for tax and accounting practitioners. Offerings range from core tax and audit training for professionals new to the industry, to high-end consulting services in which leading experts come into your practice to work directly with your staff to help increase audit productivity.
“At Thomson Reuters, we are dedicated to providing new and relevant in-house courses that offer practical guidance on issues important to practitioners,” Marino says. “Our faculty consists of experienced trainers with significant practice backgrounds who consistently receive the highest ratings for their presentations.”
While adverse economic realities have forced firms to downsize, and since the advent and of the International Finance Reporting Standards has prompted tighter standards, the reality is this: In order to remain competitive, practitioners must be educated on the latest developments in the tax and accounting fields.
In-house training programs are a viable, savvy, efficient way to help practitioners rise to the top. “By offering training in house,” Marino says, “firms can better control their own educational destiny.”
Written by Laurie Dent
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