The future of your company may very well depend on the future of your accounting department. Your product development, IT, marketing and sales teams all play essential roles in the direction of your organization, of course…but your accounting team controls the budgets. And your accountants are the ones who keep your revenues and expenses balanced as you set a course for the next horizon. If you overspend or under invest in any given aspect of the business, your ship won’t stay streamlined and your progress may falter. So be sure to keep these considerations in mind as you build your accounting and financial staffing plan for the year ahead.

Focus on pipeline building.

Creating a long-term pipeline means thinking a few moves ahead, and seeing the future manager in every junior accountant. You may not have certain positions opening up right now, but what will happen when a senior team member retires next year? Who will replace her? And who replaces the replacements all the way down the line? As each employee steps into a new role, keep an eye on the future and start grooming that person for the next position they’ll step into.

Build your culture from the ground up.

If you’re like most managers, there are some aspects of your culture that make you proud, and you’ll like to cultivate and spread these traits throughout the workplace. There may also be some culture elements you’d like to discourage and weed out. This culture-shaping process begins with you. And it begins with personal traits you search for in each candidate. Do you need more leaders, more followers, more detail-focus or more big-picture thinking? Work this goal into your staffing plan.

Examine your training process.

Before the New Year begins, determine what—if any—training your staff may lack. Find ways to work this training into the scheduled year ahead and start reaching out to vendors and educators.

Don’t be caught off guard.

Pay close attention to employee needs and personal plans during your annual review process. Ask each employee what they hope to learn and how they hope to grow during the coming year, and listen carefully to the answers. What you hear may provide insight into what your department will look like when some of these employees leave the company, stay where they are, or start gunning for promotions.

For more on how to develop and focus your hiring goals for 2015, reach out to the management and financial staffing team at Cordia.