| CASE STUDY |
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| Increasing personal efficiency in the audit sector |
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In October last year we started collaborating with the audit department from TPA Horwath Quintus. A dedicated team that wanted to be more proactive in their business relations with clients and also have more control over time, both professional as well as personal.
Context:
Status-quo:
We encountered a young team, from a working history point of view, as well as the average age and business experience. When we started our collaboration, the team's performance resulted from a constant involvement from both the firm's partner as well as the two managers in every area including the level of operational decisions. An increase was needed in the degree of proactivity, understanding and follow-through of priorities. Another important aspect that required development was the capacity to identify those activities that possessed higher value in the long chain of daily activities.
All this in a working environment that requires an increase in efficiency as well as a necessity to optimize your priorities.
Objectives:
For this project we worked directly with the team partner, whose main objectives were:
1. Helping consultants from the audit team in developing a greater degree of autonomy through an increased capacity of prioritizing and better time management
2. Creating a work climate that encourages both individual efficiency, as well as respect towards team priorities
3. Increasing the degree of proactivity and a sense of direction focused on results
Our solution
Human Invest's solution was developing a team workshop based on our "Priorities Matter!®" session - a personal efficiency and time management course.
Taught for over ten years in Romania, the session is build around an original working model composed of 5 steps - "The Priorities Matter Model!" - that offers managers and other employees a practical and pragmatic working tool focused on clearing up and follow through of working priorities, as well as developing key abilities that support this attitude.
We knew from the very start that one of the key factors for making this program work was getting the whole team involved (from Junior Consultants to Partners) in the workshop. The idea was enthusiastically accepted and put into practice.
Program
Preparing the project:
Once the need for development expressed by the audit department from TPA Horwath Quintus was identified, we still had a number of stages that we had to go through until we could start the project:
1. The client has to accept the proposal put forth by Human Invest
2. Promoting the workshop internally and launching a debate on this theme, its objective being to connect participants to the proposed solutions
3. Gathering and analyzing the answers given by participants, based on a questionnaire that tried to identify the reality of the business they were in ,their needs and individual expectations
4. A discussion with the firm's HR manager, in the week before the workshop, in order to have a more profound understanding of what the client department was going through and develop a common language based on the culture of the team we were going to work with
The session:
The workshop lasted for two days being characterized by substantial debates within the team.
What participants expected was, besides learning new ways and tools for time management, finding out how to succeed in indentifying solutions for supporting a team environment focused on efficiency, productivity, respect and autonomy.
We managed to fulfill our promise through a mix of theory, individual and group case studies, simulations and debates that created a common vision and facilitated the same level of understanding as to the way everything should work and function in the future.
Both the Partner and the two managers had key intercessions that managed to emphasize the core messages, as well as encourage free talks and opinion sharing among the staff. This was a great contribution to obtaining the high commitment necessary for putting what they learned into practice within the organization.
Follow-up:
"Monday we had a meeting that lasted precisely one hour in which we talked about the main ideas that were debated Thursday and Friday, things that moved us, what we learned and what we decided to implement starting TODAY. We also talked about the tasks we had for this week, so that Friday we could have a "wrap up week" meeting in order to see the degree to which they were accomplished"- Cristina Petrescu- Partner, Audit
Lessons and observations
1. One of the key elements for success is preparing and connecting participants before the training
2. In order for the solution to have credibility and easy implementation the manager has to be committed and involved
3. The follow-up scheduled for the first week after the session is a decisive moment. It is here where we can increase or diminish the impact of the learning experience.
Alexandra Georgescu
Trainer
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Human Invest is a Premier League company in the arena of training and organizational development consultancy services, present on the Romanian market since 1998.
We are recognized for conceiving and implementing programs which offer managers an authentic experience towards improving their leadership performances, and thus we support companies in becoming more and more engaged in delivering excellent services for their clients.
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