Benefits of Finance Staff Secondments

Businesses are often faced with a dilemma when a special project comes up that requires significant time input from accounting and finance staff.  These types of project can include integrating recently acquired businesses, responding to due diligence requests, bringing accounting…

Blog14th Mar 2018

By Sample HubSpot User

Businesses are often faced with a dilemma when a special project comes up that requires significant time input from accounting and finance staff.  These types of project can include integrating recently acquired businesses, responding to due diligence requests, bringing accounting records/systems up-to-date, implementing new systems, preparation of statutory financial statements or cover for a member of the team who is absent on maternity or sick leave.

The dilemma faced with these situations is whether the additional work can be absorbed by the existing members of the finance team or whether the business should look to take in additional resource on a temporary secondment basis.  Two of the key factors in this decision are the urgency with which the project needs to be undertaken and the specialist knowledge required for the project.

While seconding in temporary finance staff can be a more expensive option, there are also many advantages to this approach:

  • The secondee will have the specialist knowledge required for the project and the experience from being involved in similar projects before
  • The secondee is likely to have been involved with many businesses previously and from that experience can make recommendations on best practice in relation to systems and internal controls.
  • Existing members of the finance team can learn from the approach and ideas of the secondee
  • If the secondee is from an accounting practice they will be able to draw on additional specialist knowledge from their wider team as the need arises
  • An experienced secondee can integrate easily into a finance team causing minimum disruption to the team’s daily activities
  • Utilising a secondee avoids the need to place undue pressure and workload on existing employees; avoiding a situation where less attention is being paid to the day to day finance department activities.

At AAB we have a number of staff who are experienced in going into clients’ businesses on temporary secondment assignments.  If you have a need for additional resource on a temporary basis, please contact James Pirrie (james.pirrie@aab.uk) or your usual AAB contact to discuss how we can help meet your requirements.

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