Trashing time sheets is a step towards The Great Retention

The workplace has long been putting up with employee exits. It is time we take the first few steps towards The Great Retention. As challenging as it may seem, Inc.com’s Best Places to Work For roundup for 2022, revealed that simply ditching timekeeping policies is a good place to start. 

Inc.com uses an accounting firm that got rid of their billable hours as a case study. That small step sent out a message that the company values its employees. And it proved to have improved employee performance as well as retention. 

Susan Bryan and Janet Haston Quinones, who own and run accounting firm MB Group took a brave step to get rid of their timesheets this year. This bold move is step in the right direction to create a pro-family, pro-balance company culture that is supportive of ite employees’ growth. 

Recently, they even set up middle management teams that take care of ensuring that workers get the training they need to further hone their skills whether it’s creating more powerful presentations or public speaking. 

Taking a risk

This year, Bryant made her most radical move yet, nixing time sheets–the standard way most professional-services firms track billable hours. “We are taking a bit of a risk,” Bryant says. “But we want to free people up from the burden of tracking down to the 15-minute interval how they’ve spent their time. Just do great work for our clients.”

Now the firm bills clients a flat fee per project, and the new system is fostering the kind of work culture Bryant always wanted: one that brings the best out of employees, whose value isn’t reduced to a number on an invoice. She says employees are more engaged, less stressed, and deal with fewer emergencies, so they have more brainpower to serve clients and grow the business. She points to the more than $3.6 million in 2021 tax savings–besides $2.4 million in employee retention credits and $6.9 million in EIDL loans–that the firm secured for its small-business customers.

This move has the company reaping rewards. Amid The Great Resignation, MB Group has been growing exponentially in terms of staffing and business. 

Read more here.