Financial teams are the backbone of every successful business. They play a vital role in maintaining a company's financial health and stability. However, despite the importance of their work, finance workers are not always the happiest employees. In fact, 31% of finance professionals feel uncomfortable talking to their manager about mental health issues, and 23% are unsure if they would ever discuss happiness in the workplace, according to a survey carried out by the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment. 
If you're a business owner, it's important to make sure your finance team is happy and satisfied with their work or be prepared to hire new employees every couple of months! In this article, we're going to reveal seven top tips to help improve job satisfaction for your finance experts.
1. Create the Right Team Structure
Having the right team structure in place is key to a successful finance department. While finance can cover a wide range of roles and responsibilities, having a well-structured hierarchy that includes experienced leadership can help your business succeed.
So when you hire for your Finance team, make sure that your team members have the right mix of skills, knowledge, and resources to ensure they can work together effectively. By creating clear roles within the team and setting KPIs, you’ll help to reduce confusion and boost job satisfaction. Plus, they’ll know exactly who to speak to should they need help, further assistance, or sign off from a senior member of the team.
2. Automate Your Finance Team’s Processes
Automating finance processes can provide finance teams with a much-needed boost in job satisfaction. By having automated tools for finance processes such as expense management, finance teams no longer have to manually enter data or print, file, and organise endless documents. This provides an increase in efficiency, accuracy, and visibility that improves morale in finance teams.
It also keeps the business compliant with HMRC regulations and allows for easy accessibility across multiple people and departments. Automating finance processes gives finance teams back the time they need to focus on other tasks that are more meaningful, making them happier in their job roles.
3. Invest in Technology to Lessen the Load
Technology has the power to make our jobs easier and help us work more efficiently. It can significantly transform your financial team’s performance, helping to speed up, simplify and make data-driven decisions. And since we live in such a digital-first world, it makes sense that, as a business, you invest in software and digital solutions to support your finance team.
There are a number of great applications out there that can help take some of the workloads off your team’s shoulders. If you want to increase job satisfaction in your finance department, investing in some good financial management tools is a great place to start.
4. Give Your Team Enough Training Opportunities
But when it comes to using financial tools, investing is only one step of the process. You’ll also need to ensure your finance team is comfortable using the digital tools or risk causing unnecessary internal conflicts. Suppose you have just purchased a new bookkeeping software but fail to give your finance team the right level of training to use it in their current role. This can quickly cause a lot of work-related stress and confusion, especially if you insist that the senior members of your team assess performance based on the new digital solution.
Training is essential, and you should allow people to learn in a way that best suits their unique learning style. For some, it might involve a walk-through demonstration. For others, it could take the practical application to understand the benefits for themselves. By being aware of the need to train your employees, you’ll be able to more easily integrate new solutions with minimal downtime or business disruption.
5. Create a Healthy Work-Life Balance
Your finance team needs to be able to effectively manage their workloads and still have time for a healthy work-life balance. Because crunching numbers all day can become quite monotonous, especially if your finance team isn’t spending enough time relaxing and looking after their mental and physical wellbeing. Like anything in life, balance is key. And one way to encourage a better work-life balance is to offer your finance team flexible working hours.
Some people find that working from home provides them with the opportunity to rest more in the morning rather than drive to the office and meditate on their lunch break instead of sitting in a noisy staff room. These small gestures as a business can make a world of difference to your finance team and help them to stay focused and productive at work. And you’ll often find that a healthy work-life balance is often more valuable than a pay rise, especially for more senior members of your team. So rather than risk your finance team hitting burn-out and either walking away from the role or moving to another company, keep your Finance team happy, healthy, and motivated with flexibility and compassion.
In fact, according to data from Oxford Economics, replacing a single employee can cost a business up to £30,000, with retraining requiring 28 weeks to get someone new up to scratch. So by nurturing your existing team through work-life balance incentives, you can create a motivated, engaged, and content finance team and effectively eliminate this unnecessary expense from your business.
6. Provide Regular Feedback
20% of employees are unsatisfied with the frequency of feedback from their direct manager. And 30% wish they had more constructive feedback in order to improve and excel in their role.
Regular feedback is essential for keeping finance employees motivated and engaged with their job roles. Providing regular performance reviews and one-on-one feedback sessions will help to identify any potential problems or areas of improvement, but in a way that is non-judgmental and designed to empower the employee. This also gives your team the opportunity to voice their concerns and ask questions, increasing job satisfaction in the process.
7. Show Your Team Much-Needed Appreciation
Finally, recognition and appreciation can go a long way in terms of job satisfaction. Praise, whether verbal or non-verbal, can be all your team needs to feel as though the work they are putting in is being seen, is making a difference, and is appreciated. So, always take time to thank your team members for their hard work and show them that you value their contributions.
This could be as simple as sending out a company-wide email praising individuals for their efforts or rewarding your team with dress-down Fridays, a free coffee delivery with sweet treats, or something more luxurious such as a spa break!
How to Improve Job Satisfaction for Finance Managers [Recap]
So to recap, here are our 7 top tips on how to improve job satisfaction for Finance Managers:
Create The Right Team Structure
Automate Your Finance Team's Processes
Invest In Technology To Lessen The Load
Give Your Team Enough Training Opportunities
Create A Healthy Work-Life Balance
Provide Regular Feedback
Show Your Team Much-Needed Appreciation
By following these tips, you’ll be able to increase job satisfaction in your finance team and create a positive working environment. It may take some time to implement all these changes, but the long-term benefits are definitely worth it! Good luck!
