Staff Red Flags: The Babysitting Problem

Not all staff accountants are created equal. On this website, I often share techniques to help young professionals develop into their careers like asking questions, taking notes, and simply being teachable. However, there are times where it's important to examine young professionals from a supervisory perspective to see where these areas may be lacking. Today, I'm going to share with you one of the biggest red flags you can see in a staff accountant: having to babysit them.

Babysit Them?

Yes. Babysit them. In the context of today's discussion, this will refer to someone in a supervisory role having to constantly check in with the staff accountant to make sure things get done. While every job will require a different balance of agency and management for staff depending on their experience and the difficulty of the work, this idea of babysitting focuses on work that the staff account should be able to complete themselves or understand when they need to ask questions. 

How Do I Know When I Need to Babysit My Staff Accountant?

In most cases, the driving force behind the need to babysit a staff accountant is work that isn't getting done. The reason why babysitting is necessary in that context is because of a lack of communication. In my experience, the staff that need to be babysat are the ones that never proactively reach out to their senior or manager. They often say things like “oh, I meant to ask you about that” and “ I finished the first part 2 days ago. I was waiting for you to tell me what to do next” and “I had some other work come up. I'll look at that now.” The underlying theme of these statements is A question or status update that needed to be communicated was not communicated. When working with someone like this, aside from teaching them to communicate better, a manager's only option is to constantly check in and force questions out of the staff to get things done. 

Another reason a staff accountant might need to be babysat is because they lack the perspective or experience to check their own work at a high level. Things like a trial balance that doesn't balance or supporting schedules that are nowhere close to tying out. Without that fundamental understanding of how things work, a staff accountant can't get very far without messing something up, which makes it necessary to frequently stop them to keep things moving efficiently.

What Can Staff Accountants Do?

To not be considered a staff member that requires babysitting, they will need to learn how to communicate about status and questions in a proactive manner. It’s totally normal to have questions and need support as a staff level professional, but it’s not normal for a senior or manager to need to figure out when that support is needed for the staff. Staff accountants should establish a regular communication cadence with their various engagement teams and set rules for themselves regarding questions and spinning their wheels.  My preference is to give detailed instructions and tell them “if you aren’t making good progress in 30 minutes, call me.” By doing this, I aim to hopefully prevent a situation where a multiple hour delay could have been prevented in 15 minutes of further discussion. If you are a staff, I highly recommend setting this expectation yourself!