How to Set Up a Finance Staff Training Program

The knowledge, experience and expertise of your employees are the largest “asset” of most governments. It’s also easily the most expensive one: personnel costs frequently account for approximately 75% of a government’s expenses.

​Having well-trained employees as part of your Finance staff is crucial to your government’s success, as they are responsible for significant tasks such as:

• accomplishing the government’s objectives;
• managing risks;
• establishing internal controls;
• handling significant amounts of cash receipts;
• performing complex analysis;
• interpreting laws, regulations and contract provisions;
• utilizing new technology; and
• working together as a team.

​Another reason employees need to participate in regular training is because of continual changes in laws and regulations, accounting pronouncements, technology, and stakeholder expectations. If employees are not participating in ongoing training, then their skills are not being enhanced. In fact, they would be deteriorating.

In order to ensure that your team is well-trained and up-to-date in their knowledge and skills, employees need to be involved in continual training on laws, industry standards and technology affecting their areas.

Training also enhances employees’ efficiency, effectiveness and morale. 

How to set up a training program?

Some governments maintain and enhance the capabilities of its personnel through a formal training program. Most, however, do not have a formal training program, and rather provide periodic training as a need arises, or a topic of interest comes to their attention.
 
Even if a government does not have a formal training program in place for all its employees, government finance departments should develop a formal training program for their Finance staff.
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​This program should include: 

• Job Skills Identification – Management should specifically identify the skills and knowledge needed to perform each job at a high level of competency.
• Employee Skills Assessment – Each employee should be assigned and work with a more senior member of the team. You can call this person their mentor. The mentor should work with the individual to identify his/her skills as compared to the job skills needed for the job. The gap between the employee’s skills and those needed for the job should be identified and discussed.
• Identify Training Opportunities – The mentor should help the employee to identify various development opportunities in the areas needed, including self-study, training available in-house, external conferences, college courses, personal development seminars, etc. Click here for a list of training opportunities (click the link to view and download the list in Word-format); many more can be found online.
• Commitment – The individual and the mentor should agree on which development opportunities will be scheduled. The mentor should work with department management to assure the necessary time away is prioritized and the appropriate funding is obtained.
• Funding – Department management should assure there is adequate funding for a formal ongoing training program.
• Tracking – Department management should track each individual’s training progress. This progress should be recognized in the employee’s annual performance evaluation.
• Feedback - Positive feedback and/or rewards should be provided to individuals fully participating in the training program. Positive feedback should be visible to other employees in the department to assure all employees know the importance being placed by management on training.

After setting up the training program for your Finance Department employees, you may want to share the approach with other departments.
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For the attachment mentioned earlier, please click here to download the suggested list of training opportunities (click the link to view and download the list in Word-format).

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If you have more questions related to Finance Training Programs, feel free to reach out to Kevin directly:

Kevin Harper, CPA
kharper@kevinharpercpa.com
(510) 593-503

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