Teaching Your Employees About Accounting

Many non-accounting employees don’t make the connection between their job efforts and the bottom line. When you can get your workers to understand the impact of their actions and decisions on profitability, you are well on your way to meeting your business goals. Don’t overuse the financial jargon you learned from your accountant. Use plain English when translating financial performance into meaningful learning points.

Make the education process interesting and goal oriented. For example, at employee meetings, rather than just sharing the monthly profit and loss numbers, break up your personnel into small, cross-functional groups and have them guess what your total sales and costs were. Offer lunch coupons for the group with the most correct answers and invite your accountant to the meeting to explain why their guesses were either right or off-the-mark. Afterward, hold an open discussion on what could be done to further improve the numbers.