WHY CYBERSECURITY IS ABOUT CULTURE AS MUCH AS TECHNOLOGY

BLOG By Rhys Madoc, CEO, UHY International June 2022

In the post pandemic world of work, robust cybersecurity defences are more crucial than ever.

That is not saying anything that most of us don’t know, but it is worth repeating. The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation, making us all much more reliant on online tools and services than we were just two years ago.

In our profession, we have seen a significant shift to using cloud-based bookkeeping software; and our clients expect to be able to contact us over Zoom, Teams or chat, as well as in person. We store more critical data in digital strongrooms, either in the cloud or on in-house servers.

Across the corporate world, reputations, revenue and even the futures of businesses rely on being able to keep that information safe. That is not an easy task. Cybercriminals are a determined foe.

DOING THE SIMPLE THINGS – EVERY TIME

However, as determined as the criminals are, the reputation of cybercrime can sometimes exceed its reality. Cybercrime is rarely rocket science. The things you need to do to foil most attackers are actually quite simple – you just need to do them again, and again, and again.

That means not just investing in an enterprise grade firewall, but making sure it is always updated to the latest version. It means backing up data on a daily basis. It means buying and applying Virtual Private Network (VPN) licences for employees connecting to your network remotely and making sure they use them.

And perhaps most of all, it means making caution routine. Deleting an email that contains a link you don’t recognise once is not enough. You have to avoid clicking suspicious links every time you encounter them, from now until forever.

That is a tough ask, because it requires constant vigilance. Drop your guard on just one occasion and the hackers might be in.

TTHE HOLISTIC APPROACH TO CYBERSECURITY

That stark truth is confirmed by statistics. A recent report found that 85% of data breaches have a human aspect (source: Verizon, Data Breach Investigations Report 2022). The average cost of a data breach, meanwhile, is an eye watering USD 4.24 million according to IBM (source: IBM.com/security).

How do you avoid the calamity of a major cybersecurity incident? It takes a holistic approach, which certainly includes technology, and might require third party support.

Many UHY member firms around the world now offer cybersecurity as a professional service. Our US firm, for example, operates a rapid response unit, which has a formidable reputation for forensically investigating security breaches and containing threats before significant damage can be done.

EDUCATION IS YOUR FIRST LINE OF DEFENCE

But whatever else you do, your cybersecurity strategy absolutely must include employee education. In one telling study, 61% of employees failed a cybersecurity quiz, and 60% of those that failed said they felt safe from online threats (source: talentlms.com cybersecurity survey).

In my opinion, that sort of misplaced confidence is as big a threat to your organisation as an unpatched server. Cybersecurity training should now be compulsory for all employees, as part of a process of continuing learning. Annual refresher courses should cover at least the basics, from recognising phishing attacks and securing mobile devices to connecting securely to your network from outside the office.

Or to put it another way, cybersecurity needs to become a habit. Your resilience to cyber attacks depends on the continuous vigilance of every member of your organisation.

So put the tools in place, from firewalls and antivirus software to intrusion detection and prevention systems. But remember that cyber resilience is as much about instilling a culture of caution as it is investing in the latest technology. As an organisation, you are only as strong as your weakest link.

Image acknowledgements: Microsoft 365 subscriber content

IS IT NATURE OR NURTURE?

BLOG By Rhys Madoc, CEO, UHY International May 2022

Are leaders born or made? It’s an important question, because if you believe that leadership is a genetic predisposition, you had better make sure your talent acquisition strategy is first class.

On the other hand, if you think leadership can be taught and developed in people, you need to have the processes and resources in place to give talented candidates the hard and soft skills they need.

In my experience, most businesses will mix and match. They will recruit new leaders and also promote from within. But the prevailing wisdom favours an educational route to leadership in business. Some people arrive in your organisation fully formed, with the talent, drive and charisma to be leaders, but arguably they are likely to be a minority. Many more will have a potential that needs to be nurtured.

Doing so is critical to moving our firms forward, and maintaining stability of knowledge – the foundations to grow. More than anything else, good leadership candidates can future-proof your business, and help set tomorrow’s agenda. But what does that nurture process entail? Here are a few ideas.

Identify the best candidates

How do you identify the next generation of leaders? In professional services, excellent technical skills are a given, but you are also looking for evidence of strategic thinking.

• Do they come to meetings with ideas?
• Do they proactively suggest new ways of doing things?
• Do they have a grasp of the bigger picture?

Good candidates may naturally take the lead on projects, but not by being the loudest or most forthright voice in the room. Persuasion is often the natural result of good ideas and clear thinking.

Train them for leadership

Potential leaders will be keen to learn, and you should give them the resources that allow them to explore their natural curiosity. Management development programmes will target ‘hard’ leadership skills like commercial awareness and business development, but soft skills are just as important. Leaders don’t shout or snap orders anymore. They persuade and motivate. They know how to manage remote teams as well as in-house. They are the number one reason other talented people come to work for your business – and stay.

Give them reason to stay

You need a retention strategy targeted towards your very best people. One study found that the top 25% of employees are four times more productive than average – and up to eight times more productive in specialist areas (such as tax, for example). Good people tend to know their worth. If you undervalue them, they will leave.

This is not necessarily a question of money. According to recent Gartner research, people want ‘radical flexibility’, which means a degree of autonomy. They want to feel cared for, so you need a wellbeing strategy. They want to have a sense of purpose and shared values. Perhaps more than anything, they want opportunities for personal growth. In terms of your leadership candidates, this could be the clincher.

Give them a path to success

In short, your best people could leave if they do not see a path to progression. The end of that path cannot be in some distant fairytale future. Top talent needs to know that good work, commitment and the acquisition of new skills and knowledge will be rewarded with promotion. They need to know with certainty the steps they have to take to make the next rung of the ladder, and when – all being well – they can expect to achieve it.

Larger organisations may implement formal leadership identification and development processes. Smaller ones may follow more informal paths, but the result should be the same. Employees with leadership potential should know how that potential is to be developed and when it will lead to concrete progress.

At UHY a development priority is to encourage our leaders of the future, from formal and informal webinar and conference learning around succession planning, to providing an annual leadership forum in Spain. The UHY Forum has run since 2002 and forum alumni have gone on to achieve remarkable success in member firms throughout the UHY network. UHY’s current international chairman and the managing partner of UHY Hacker Young (London & Nottingham) in the UK, Subarna Banerjee (pictured) is an alumnus of the UHY Forum and there are many other alumni members who are now in significant leadership roles across our network.

Nurture first

Why is any of this important? Can you simply go out to the market and recruit the leadership talent you need? The answer is that often you cannot find the ‘right fit’ person – whatever the ‘right fit’ is! Variety of experience brings its own rewards to an organisation in the form of new ideas and developing culture. Fully formed talent is in short supply and highly valued (which makes it expensive).

In the era of post-pandemic working, where great employees and potential recruits have a new-found sense of self – and arguably more bargaining power – I believe that nurturing your next generation of leaders from within is more necessary than ever.

The good news is that your next management candidate is probably in your organisation already. You just have to let their promise flourish.

Image acknowledgements:
Best candidate: Photo by Kona Studios on Unsplash
Meeting, and Subarna Banerjee: © UHY International

TRAINING EQUIPS YOUR TEAM FOR BETTER CLIENT SERVICE

BLOG By Rhys Madoc, CEO, UHY International March 2022

Clients expect professional service providers to offer the most up to date expertise and advice. Naturally, they expect us to be familiar with relevant legislation changes, regulatory reform, reporting standards and so on. But rightly, they demand more. They want professional service providers that are equipped with the latest skills to help their businesses thrive in a competitive world.

And that mix of skills is changing, as a result of the pandemic and the march of technology. For that reason, training should never be seen as a one-off activity that happens as part of an employee’s onboarding process and never repeated. Training needs to be a continuous journey enabling both growth in knowledge and impact within the firm as well as on client projects. In a fast moving digital world, knowledge that is current today can soon become obsolete. In fact, it has been calculated that the half-life of a work skill is four years. This could mean that every four years our skills become half as valuable. That period is likely to be considerably shorter for technology-based skills.

The key to loyalty and longevity

To give our clients the best possible service and advice, we need to continually update our knowledge and upskill our workforce. That’s especially true after a shock such as the Covid pandemic, which highlighted the importance of digital skills around the world.

But continual training serves another purpose. It helps organisations attract and retain the very best talent. It is generally recognised that top employees regard lifelong learning opportunities as a crucial employee benefit.

It is easy to see why. Good employees want their firms to be successful. They also want to equip themselves to thrive in an uncertain future.

Continual training is an effective way for employees to drive careers forward today, and to equip themselves for the career challenges of tomorrow, whether that means economic downturns or the encroachment of AI (artificial intelligence) into the world of work.

Your top employees know that the skills that are useful today may be very different from those they will need in ten years’ time. Organisations that help them continually acquire new capabilities are likely to be rewarded with loyalty and commitment.

Learning is securing your future

The benefits of training and development reinforce each other. Continual learning opportunities update your in-house expertise. Employees who feel invested in work harder to deliver better outcomes. It is win-win for firms, colleagues and clients.

In addition, training adds to your organisation’s wider knowledge base, and well trained staff identify new opportunities and contribute to organisational improvements. They help to drive change.

In that respect, continual learning and development is a bona fide way to future proof your firm, because it allows you to offer new services or new ways of working as soon as a demand for them becomes apparent. That can give you first mover advantage.

Learning is all encompassing

A key point to recognise is that learning comes in numerous forms. It can mean traditional off-site classroom-based courses, though these days it is just as likely to mean webinars and classes delivered online or over Zoom.

Here at UHY we provide a comprehensive range of training webinars to our member firms around the world, aimed at continually updating both the technical and ‘soft’ skills required for effective performance, and expanding the knowledge base of our global network of great people. In a profession which is continually changing, it is important to ensure the business has all the right skills on board.

But learning and development goes beyond formal classes and courses. It can encompass, for example, work shadowing and mentoring.

At UHY, we encourage member firms to offer secondments. These can fill operational gaps in the short term, build the skills and knowledge of the individual concerned as well as support service delivery to the client.

We find that secondment is especially invaluable when it happens across borders, because it brings our professionals first-hand knowledge of the challenges businesses face when they internationalise their operations. It also exposes them to different ways of solving problems, and helps us become more effective advisors to those of our clients with cross border ambitions.

Knowledge and skills are differentiators

UHY’s continual learning programme allows our professionals to update technical skills, keep up with wider developments in accountancy – whether they be international taxation guidelines or smarter tech solutions – alongside developing leadership, management, commercial and team-building skills.

UHY offers lifelong learning and development opportunities because it is the right thing to do. Our network of talented people want long and fulfilling careers, and we want them to build those careers with us.

By investing in their future, we are investing in the success of our clients.

Image acknowledgements: Microsoft 365 subscriber content

BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN IN PRACTICE?

BLOG By Rhys Madoc, CEO, UHY International February 2022

Naturally, clients expect the best possible service from providers like UHY member firms. An important way we meet that expectation is through seamless and instinctive collaboration, within our teams, offices and the network as a whole.

It is no surprise, then, that working together is one of the four pillars of our network strategy. We know that when we collaborate we bring together a wide pool of knowledge and experience for the benefit of our clients.

Working together makes us better auditors, tax experts and business advisors. It means we can look at a client’s problem from multiple angles and bring in additional expertise to offer a second opinion or confirm a conclusion. When clients want cross-border services, working together means collaborating to give them the best local knowledge and on-the-ground expertise, helping them achieve their international ambitions.

It is known that collaboration is central to a successful business. Studies, such as that by Forbes have shown that teams which work together are more productive and innovative than teams which do not. But for a global professional services network like UHY, collaboration takes several forms, which in turn come together to form one seamless and joined up service.

Internal network collaboration

We collaborate as a network to share best practice, the latest research and new knowledge garnered from unique or complex client projects. 

We do that through our internal publications, a calendar of regional and global meetings and our network intranet, which is a comprehensive repository of articles, case studies, best-practice templates and training resources.

We encourage all our member firm offices to engage in continued discussion about our strategic direction and how it can better serve clients. 

This ongoing conversation feeds into an annual calendar of training and development opportunities.  

Collaboration on client projects

Clients expect us to collaborate internally and with their own teams – and sometimes with third parties too – for the best possible outcome. We want clients to see us as an extension of their own team.

Internally, collaboration happens when UHY individual experts and functional teams across different disciplines work together to provide a holistic service. These specialists might be in the same office, in cross-functional client service teams, or they might be on the other side of the world. In UHY we quickly know who to call in any one of our offices and any member firm can tap into the wider knowledge of the network to help them better meet client challenges.

Client stories in our bi-annual UHY Global magazine detail the ways in which our member firms come together to help clients, often on cross-border projects. Clients regularly ask for our help when auditing or opening overseas offices and subsidiaries, and acquiring foreign businesses. We offer a breadth of knowledge and experience across industries and sectors by harnessing the collective power of our network and tailoring it to each client’s needs.

COLLABORATIVE TEAMS

While collaboration often happens naturally, we also put processes in place to identify the opportunities to serve clients better. To that end, every UHY member firm has an International Contact Partner whose role it is to answer queries from international colleagues and clients alike, and oversee the progress of collaborative cross-border projects. Our Referrals Partners endeavour to ensure that cross-border work and enquiries received from – and outsourced to – other member firms, are effectively managed.

In other words, collaboration is built into our systems and processes. The result we strive to achieve, for clients, is a comprehensive and seamless service and solution, whether their project involves one UHY member firm or ten.

Image acknowledgements:

Map graphic and client story collage ©UHY International

Collaborative working Microsoft 365 subscriber content