How our Hub system works for you
We’ve been talking about our ‘hub’ concept a lot over the past two years and as a bookkeeping business with almost 20 employees, it’s a concept not a lot of other bookkeeping businesses can offer.
Bookkeeping is a relentless business with each new month opening another set of checklists and items to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. As such, the volume of clients and nature of the work we undertake is often quite large and involved. We don’t just provide standard bookkeeping and transactional accounts management, but also consultancy and high-level accounts management if you require it.
How did the idea form?
Our ability to grow as a business was stunted due to Louise having a 15-1 staff ratio and all our bottlenecks occurred with her time availability. Recruiting and onboarding new staff & clients were challenging and Louise herself knew she was doing a very average job of managing all the hats she was wearing. Louise attended a 2-day Zac De Silva strategic leadership workshop and from this came a plan. After consultation with the team, a decision was made to create a Growth Pathway. This provided our internal team an opportunity to step into an introductory leadership role and see if our Seniors liked coming off the tools and moving into a leadership role. Thus, creating the Hub Coordinator (HC).
Our HCs manage the daily workflow planning for their team and their hub clients. They are constantly checking deadlines, accuracy of work, holiday planning, onboarding of clients, new staff, and more. They are the ‘go-to’ person for their team. The HC role has provided the opportunity for leaders to emerge and for those that have wanted to trial the role to decide if a move into leadership is right for them. Providing the opportunity for our internal team to develop into a leadership role vs recruiting leaders has been a slower road to implementing this new look team, however, we are confident this is now reaching momentum and is the right format for our business.
Advantages to our clients
When a client calls the office, they want to know they can reach the person primarily responsible for their account. Our onboarding process involves an introduction to a primary account manager or bookkeeper – this is the day-to-day contact person. Then we’re able to offer a backup contact which is usually another person in that hub, as well as the hub coordinator. This process covers any staff absences and ensures our clients know their work doesn’t drop because someone is away. It’s one of our cogs that keeps things moving.
There is always going to be some movement between teams. Sometimes the scope of work changes or clients leave, or someone in the team can provide a niche skillset that means some reshuffling is required. This doesn’t happen often, but we’re set up to manage any changes quickly and easily with minimal stress on the rest of the team and the client.
Most recently we created a payroll specialist hub, lead by our in-house payroll specialist – Sarah. Sarah now has 2 other team members working with her, concentrating specifically on onboarding those clients wanting payroll management. Sarah’s hub will onboard new clients, streamline their systems and processes, and will then hand over the clients to a long-term Account Manager while providing review and oversight in the background and cover in staff absence.
Teamwork is everything to us, not just a trend. As anyone managing a team knows, it’s always a work in progress. The wellbeing of our staff is crucial and when the team is cohesive and working well, it’s conveyed in the quality of our work. Receiving client testimonials that confirm what we wanted to achieve is so uplifting for all of us.
The future for Red Office
Our new look team structure is providing us the opportunity to keep growing our staff numbers and our hubs. Those wanting to be in a team leader position can put themselves forward and we encourage continual professional development and education. HCs attend external leadership training across their first 6 months in their new role and our long-term strategy is to provide the opportunity for a promotion to a Team Leader 12-24months into their role once we have developed their teams to 6 staff. Our Team Leader role will be a full leadership role with overall responsibility for all KPI’s for their team from recruiting, performance management, client onboarding, audits etc. Team Leaders or HCs will have a business within our business and the opportunity to take their leadership career to the next level. We’re pleased that we are able to offer growth and career opportunities to our team and this aspect remains in our annual goal planning.
