Rowe Partners is an Accounting and Advisory firm with 44 employees and multiple offices across Adelaide and South Australia. With an impressive growth trajectory over the past 3 years, they have sensed the forthcoming challenges surrounding retaining and attracting the best talent as they continue to be a people-focused, high-performing firm.
With the challenges of the modern working environment and the talent market, Rowe Partners continue to make an effort to also understand the link between employee wellbeing and employee performance, digging deeper than the traditional productivity metrics that are common industry-wide.
Pleasingly Rowe Partners were able to buck the trendline seen on the Everperform Performance Index by not only improving traditional performance metrics, but equally as important they saw an uptick in work/life balance by 9.09% firm wide during the busiest and most stressful time of year.
Chad McKnight, Partner, also commented on the new found ability to look beyond the traditional performance measures to get a more holistic view of their employees.
“Everperform has provided me with all the key metrics that we are used to in our firm, but with the addition of the people metrics like wellbeing and relationships this has given great insight into our performance with the context of how people are thinking and feeling.”
Moreover, insights gained through connecting Xero Practice Manager (XPM) and Everperform have been significant to the firm being able to visualise, benchmark and analyse key metrics for each individual, team and firm-wide. ‘Xero has been a game changer for us. ' said Chad. At Rowe Partners, the firm has a keen focus on increasing the advisory and consulting services they provide their clients and found themselves needing to answer a simple but very important question.
“We are no longer a team of 10 people, and this has made it difficult to keep in touch with our teams on a regular basis. Everperform has provided us with insights even when we are remote”
Where are our people spending their time?
Everperform’s benchmarking analytics made it easy to answer this question, by making it easy to compare roles and locations to understand who and where the firms best performers were, as well as shining a light on outliers who may need assistance. Without the ability to analyse and map the data, it would have been impractical to answer the question effectively.
However, importantly it wasn't simply about asking how people are going today, but about asking the question:
‘Are our people improving?’
XPM data from the past 4 years was mapped to Everperform which enabled the firm to have a clear view of individual growth profiles, specifically providing insight on charge out and recovery rates, as well as changes in time allocation and type of work as any individual career progressed. As firm size grows it becomes more difficult to have a good grasp on all employees progress and performance without leveraging technology.
The results have been positive says Partner, Chad McKnight who noticed that
‘We continue to grow our revenue base with less people doing the work. That is confirmation that we are getting better as individuals and as a team'
Many firms in the industry are trying to solve the challenge that employee wellbeing has presented but are presented with a few hurdles before even being able to ask the question ‘are you okay?’. ‘We sensed that our people may not be approaching us to talk about the topics that are non-work related because they think we are too busy.’ Chad noted.
‘Are my people ok?’
Through the weekly Everperform pulses, Jaene McKnight, Business Operations Manager, noted they were
‘able to help open up a really important conversation with an employee who was going through a really tough time. Without Everperform, we probably wouldn’t have known, and therefore, wouldn’t have been able to help.’
Technology certainly presents its challenges to employee wellbeing and relationships but it can also act as an integral support mechanism to enhance performance, which as Everperform defines it consists of Wellbeing, Relationships and Productivity. Rowe Partners have growth in their future, with a big year ahead they know the importance of supporting their staff through the growth period as they strive for future success.