Are accountants really the fountain of all information

Are accountants really the fountain of all information?

As a Head of a recruitment and apprenticeship agency, I have seen my fair share of businesses in the growth phase. That often means pushing their business to do things they haven’t done before. This might mean forging employee contracts, recruiting the right people or adding policies & procedures to their business. Despite a varied mix of issues, most businesses seem to only have one person they turn to for professional advice – their accountant!

Don’t get me wrong. Accountants are very useful advisors and our Accountant is professional and well respected but for different aspects of  advice, I need to consider if I am going to the right person for that particular issue rather than a catch-all solution.

In my experience I have seen business owners go to their accountants for advice on:

all legal issues

business planning and growth planning

marketing strategy

IT matters and issues

recruitment of staffing

employment and contractual decision

all aspects of HR

property related matters

health and safety matters

Say I need some advice on health and safety. I may feel like the person who is most likely to know about it – who I have at hand, at least – is the accountant. So I go to them, regardless of qualification. You may do the same kind of thing.

Truth is, this isn’t fair on the accountant, who is probably too kind to say no; and isn’t fair on the staff who rely on your health and safety observations for a healthy work environment. The advice you will receive is unlikely to be the best out there.

Using a single advisor to catch-all is likely to come back and cause more issues in the long-term.

But what alternatives do we have?

The immediate compulsion is to try the collective knowledge of the internet. Fair enough – it works for many other things. Finding the information on the net can be helpful in a limited number of cases.

If you are taking on your first member of staff and want an employee handbook, the internet can provide some decent outlines for these. Unless the job has unusual requirements, the internet is not a bad place to turn for an adequate handbook. Though I would always recommend you comb over this with someone who has professional experience. As the business grows, the internet becomes less of a useful resource.

In the example of health and safety, it is not so advised to turn to the internet. The results are largely generic and can rarely be understood to a depth where they become useful. What we are missing with this choice is a tailored response for each business.

Another alternative is finding a professional, outsourced advisor for each area that you want advice in.

For health and safety, an outsourced health and safety consultant may be the answer. The primary issue will be that judgement call about the risks and whether one is necessary. I would advise going with your gut – if you think you might need one, give them a call and they will often tell you whether their service will be suitable for you.

In HR, many of the tasks taken by a small business are done by its owner. That step between a small business and a larger one with its own HR department is a fairly big one. But in that gap, there is frequently room for professional input. Be it the creation of an employee handbook or more serious issues of disciplinary matters, an outsourced HR professional will often be the business advisor you should look to.

There are numerous other areas where looking for an appropriate professional advisor is the most suitable course of action. That might be recruitment, marketing, legal matters; the list goes on.

I’ll stress that I’m not advocating a spend, spend, spend mentality here. But as a business owners, we need to get the right advice.

I absolutely rely on my accountant. If I had to pinch some pennies, I would not consider the accountant to get employment and HR advice. I think it’s important to follow the same logic with other areas as well.