Does reduced stress, better physical and mental well-being, increased job satisfaction, and improved productivity sound intriguing to you as an accounting professional?

These are just a few of the benefits of work-life balance — something that a majority of accounting and financial professionals want but defining it for yourself can greatly depend on factors unique to your individual preferences and circumstances.

Understanding Work-Life Balance

The importance of work-life balance in 2023 is more significant now than ever. The dynamic and changing nature of the modern working era has brought about many priority shifts in today’s accounting and finance workforce.

Accounting professionals play a vital role in organizations, managing financial records, ensuring compliance, and providing valuable insights for decision-making. However, the nature of their work often involves long hours, tight deadlines, and high levels of responsibility.

Despite more than 300,000 accountants and auditors having left their jobs due to CPA requirements and workplace shifts due to baby boomer retirement, the accounting and finance profession still proves to be a stable and recession-proof industry. Yes, it’s true that the profession is demanding, especially during busy season and month-end or year-end!  But, you CAN still find a good environment and achieve work-life balance.

Here are a few key areas to think about when asked the interview question “What does work-life balance mean to you”:

Accessibility

Establishing clear boundaries for yourself (and for your employer) is crucial. Employees should communicate their availability and accessibility to clients, colleagues, and supervisors to ensure uninterrupted personal time and minimize work-related interactions during non-work hours.

In recent years, the ability to work from home has entered the conversation and muddied the waters of accessibility. When home becomes the workplace, it’s important to think about where the cutoff between your work and your personal life is.

A remote accountant may have to be more self-disciplined than someone who regularly goes into an office. Having cut-off times for work and personal time is integral. It’s easy to feel the imbalance from home and careful consideration should be made of where your ideal situation sits.

Accessibility Self-Reflection Questions

• What hybrid schedule is best for me – mentally, physically?
• Does a commute to an office help me separate work life and home life?
• When I work from home, do I notice clients, colleagues, and supervisors reaching out to me outside of business hours?

Trust & Delegation

A trusting work environment fosters collaboration and effective communication among team members.

In an environment where you can trust colleagues to handle delegated tasks, it encourages open dialogue, knowledge sharing, and seamless coordination. This collaborative environment enhances teamwork, improves problem-solving capabilities, and reduces stress levels for everyone involved.

By delegating tasks to capable colleagues, you can have peace of mind, knowing that your responsibilities are being handled. This enables you to detach from work during personal time and achieve a better balance between your professional and personal life.

Trust and Delegation Self-Reflection Questions

• Am I empowering my coworkers or employees to handle tasks without me?
• Have I noticed that I have an issue letting go of control?
• Would others characterize me as a ‘workaholic’?
• Do I trust the people I work with to get things done when I’m not there?
• How could delegating be improved at my workplace (i.e. clearer communication on expectations, better training, etc.)?
• Have you made sure that everyone on your team who depends on the work you do can function normally without you there?

Win-Win

At the end of the day, the discussion around work-life balance is typically a personal one, chiefly involving the question of what you’re looking for. Anna Orr, Executive Recruiter at Accountants One says, “Work-life balance is driven by you. Be strategic about planning it [PTO], disciplined about taking it, and contemplating the win-win for everybody.”

Always think about the win-win. Whatever the case may be regarding PTO (paid time off), or more balanced work weeks, you should try to establish a win-win scenario for you and your employer.

Here is one example of a win-win scenario: You identify and implement a new accounting technology such as an automation solution or accounting software that speeds up a process whereby your employer benefits by efficient and accurate accounting processes and you get an extra five hours back of your week.

Remember, the guarantee of what you’re looking for might not be on the table immediately, but in most cases, the more trust and credibility you show your employer, the more likely you will get the work-life balance you are looking for.

Win-Win Self-Reflection Questions

• How am I currently bringing value to the organization?
• What processes can I improve for my organization that will help me and the organization itself?
• Am I putting in the necessary preparation to have the time off I need?

Establishing a win-win scenario requires collaboration and commitment from both you and your employer. By recognizing and actively promoting work-life balance, employers and employees can forge a path toward a more fulfilling and harmonious future.

Conclusion

Take the time to think strategically about your time and efforts. You want to be effective wherever and however you’re working. The key to finding a work-life balance that you want doesn’t lie exclusively in finding a job that has it built in. Most of the time it lies in the collaboration with your employer, your team, and ultimately yourself.

When you’re in the often unenviable role of “job seeker”, you’re so eager to prove you’re everything a potential employer could want, it’s easy to neglect what YOU want.

Of course, before we can seek what we truly want in a job, we first must define it for ourselves.  So, how can you best evaluate a job offer to ensure it will lead to long-term career satisfaction?

While it may be tempting to jump at an offer that feels like it meets your financial needs, there’s a lot more to a rewarding role than the size of a paycheck.  In fact, today candidates are asking for a lot more from the companies interested in them.

Let’s look at how to best approach a new opportunity to ensure that you’ll land somewhere that fulfills what matters to you most:

1) Do Your Research

First, research the prospective company with the same deep dive they’re likely taking in learning about you.  Explore their website and their social media pages so you can understand their vision, their mission, and their culture.  Do their values align with yours?  In what ways do they speak of valuing their employees?  If you could describe the company’s “personality” in one sentence, what would that be? 

You’ll also want to consider how well-established the business is, and what kind of influence you will have on the company itself.  It’s worth exploring questions about your specific role:  Will you be doing a variety of tasks or taking more of a deep dive into a particular skill set?  Is it a culture that encourages learning and development of your skills?

These are questions that may not be answered by a simple Google search, so the next step in ensuring your job satisfaction involves action that is a bit more tactical.

2) Perform a Company Reference Call

Just as a business will reach out to your references to get a sense of who you are and how well you fulfill their needs, you can do the same with the company.  Performing a company reference call is an effective step in understanding what an organization is really like.

Visit LinkedIn and seek out former employees who might be willing to briefly share their insights with you about their time there.  Ask questions, such as:

• What is the potential for upward growth?
• Is the organization flat or hierarchal?
• How many layers are there between you and your ideal role?
• What is the turnover like?
• Do people like working there?
• What is the culture like: do employees hang out with each other, or do they just do their jobs and go home?
• How do they celebrate holidays/special occasions in the workplace?

Questions such as these tell a lot about the work environment which you’re considering entering and can help you make a more well-informed decision about where you’re planning to spend 40+ hours each week for the foreseeable future.

3) Ask Your Recruiter

Next, you can talk to your recruiter, asking them to share what they know about the company’s culture and what the day-to-day work environment is like.  Recruiters often have a rich awareness of the businesses they are supporting and want nothing more than to create an ideal match.  So, a conversation with your recruiter may just give you the insights you need to make a final decision.  Again, ask questions that get to the heart of what matters most to you, such as:

• What have employees said about working there?
• What kind of employee tends to be most successful?
• What do I need to look out for?
• What is the dynamic between management and employees?
• How would you describe the company culture?
• How would you describe management’s leadership style?

Of course, you may have other questions as well, including what the company values, what perks they offer their employees, and what feedback the recruiters have heard from others who they’ve helped onboard at the organization.

4) Ask Your Interviewer Qualifying Questions

Finally, when it’s time for the big interview, think of it as a two-way street.  Your interviewer will be asking you a healthy list of questions about yourself, and you should be prepared to do the same with them.  In fact, they’d be disappointed if you didn’t come in with some qualifying questions.  After all, they want someone who is curious, ambitious, and eager to find a good fit for themselves.  Here are some potential questions for your interviewer or the hiring manager:

• What would an average work week look like?
• What about a busy one?
• What kind of people are successful here?
• What do you personally like about working here?
• What’s something you hope will change about the business in the near future?
• What advice would you give someone who is interested in working here?

Final Words

As you can see, there are a lot of steps involved to truly evaluate a job offer on a cultural and technical level.  One more step – perhaps, in fact, the first one to take – is to talk to Accountants One about your aspirations.

We’re a business made up of talented recruiters who truly care about your career journey.  We’re good listeners who are invested in helping you discover what matters most to you and then matching you with a role that helps bring those goals to fruition.  Think of us as trusted career partners who value people and their passions.  In fact, that’s OUR passion:  connecting you with a role that will allow you to thrive.  We’re here to help you find AND qualify for job opportunities so you can curate the career you desire.