Welcome to our #AskACPA feature where we answer financial, accounting and business questions.
Question: As a woman small business owner, what are tips to transition into the new year?
Entering a new year as an entrepreneur, whether you have a side hustle or full-time business, is not just a fresh start, but an opportunity to transition into a more fruitful business season. While it is important to set goals for your business, it is also crucial to effectively make the transition from one year to the other, especially as related to your finances and accounting. This is especially important considering the many disadvantages faced by women-owned businesses as a result of the current COVID-19 pandemic, despite the increase in new entrepreneurial ventures started by women during this period.
As an entrepreneur, how you finish one year, and start another year sets the tone for the future of your business. Many, if not most important metrics by which your business’ performance are measured, including budgets and benchmarks, are set at the beginning of the period. The goals set ahead are also defined at the beginning of the year, which all make the transition from one period to the other a particularly critical time.
If you’re working through your business transition from one year to another as a female entrepreneur, here are a few steps that may help:
Re-awaken your business’ WHY
Before even delving into financial and accounting figures and projections, the first step is to refresh your business’ WHY. That is your business’ purpose, the reason why you started it all in the first place. Your financial and accounting processes are only significant enough to the point where they are aligned with your business’ WHY.
After all, all your financial and accounting performance does is tell the story of your business, defined and embodied by its purpose. It’s the same purpose that ought to drive your strategy, and ultimately your financial results.
What is your business’ WHY? Has it changed from last year to this period? If so, in what ways? Are you still in alignment with it or have you lost sight of it?
Be honest about where you stand financially
This is especially important if your business is on a fiscal year calendar, which means it reports its financial results on a calendar year basis. As such, year-end financial statements and reports constitute an excellent barometer to assess the business’ performance in the course of the prior year.
As you closed the prior year a few days/weeks earlier, where do your business’ revenues stand? Have your revenues increased or decreased in the course of the prior year? How have your business’ expenses changed? What other parts of your financials have been affected? What are the reasons behind these changes, if any?
Being honest about, and understand where your business stands financially, allows you to transition into a new year with a better sense of the modifications needed to further your WHY.
Make a plan
Last but not least, relying on a refreshed sense of your business” WHY, as well as a clear understanding of where your business stands financially, allows you to confirm any goals you’ve set. Even better, it lets you devise a plan to reach these goals in a way that aligns with your business’ WHY, and address any gaps identified when reviewing your prior year performance.
Transitioning into a new year as a business requires a bit of a process. These 3 steps can help smooth out the transition and set you up for a successful year ahead.
In this episode, I delve into 3 tips to transition into the New Year as a woman at work. While we discussed setting goals in last episode, here we dig into the work to do to actually effectively cross the threshold from one year to the other at work.
Listen in!
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Making the transition to a new year can be quite a daunting process. Making the transition to a new year in the midst of an ongoing pandemic, school and daycare closures, a general movement of career resignation, in a time riddled with social and political instability, is a monumentally challenging feat. As we step into the next twelve months of what seems an unending crisis, working moms everywhere are gearing up for yet another difficult shift.
From carrying the brunt of the COVID-19 global crisis, both on the home and career front, to continuing to live with the trauma and angst of disease, school and daycare closures, work layoffs and resignations, the challenges have not diminished for working mothers. Quite to the contrary… Adding to it the ever-continuing debate around paid leave, gender equity, and the need for increased diversity and inclusion at work in general, and many are just waiting to wake up from the longest nightmare ever…
Yet, there are ways organizations and businesses can help to lessen the weight on working moms’ shoulders, while providing an incentive for them to keep and strive in their careers, instead of punishing them for what is largely out of their control. Here are a few suggestions, as we’re starting this new year:
Listen more to working mother’s needs
Much of the structural and cultural foundation of businesses and organizations as we know them have been inherited from a fundamental patriarchal setting. This is a setting which has not allowed for women’s voices to be heard enough in order for the needed structural, cultural and behavioral changes to be put in place and implemented. As an increasing number of working mothers are raising their voices, most notably as a result of the recent pandemic, many are realizing the unmet needs, and resulting pressures on motherhood. Something as simple as creating forums and spaces where working mothers’ voices can continue to be heard can bring about more of the much-needed awareness around what’s truly at stake, as well as ways to remedy these issues.
Hire and promote more working mothers
This involves removing barriers, and opening doors of opportunity for working moms to reach levels of influence where their combined experience, knowledge and acumen can create positive change for other working mothers. It’s also a matter of acknowledging the often unconscious bias standing in the way of working mother’s hiring and promotions, including but not limited to the broken rung, glass ceiling, and gender pay gap…
Offer flexible options…
As has been shown during the pandemic, strategic, well-managed flexibility does not hinder employees’ performance, but rather can increase it. Flexibility for working mothers is essential to manage the various areas of their work and life, which makes it important for businesses and organizations to offer these options.
…but don’t punish them for choosing flexibility
However, there is often a negative bias associated with flexible work options, especially when these are taken advantage of by working mothers. The latter are often assumed not to be able to handle the demands of motherhood and work, thus unfortunately in many cases being sidelined for advancement or not considered leadership material. The proverbial “mommy track” has been dubbed as such in reference to the lessened career advancement opportunities offered to working mothers taking advantage of flexible work options or reduced work hours for greater work-life balance.
Review current policies and procedures
Many, if not most, organizational and business policies and procedures are not specific enough to cover the needs of working mothers. Neither do they consider the range of issues that can affect a working mom parenting in circumstances as dire as a global pandemic, such as having to work from home with a sick kid, for instance. Reviewing current policies and procedures, at least on an annual basis, can help identify gaps that can be remedied in the short or long-term.
Revisit the company’s culture
Last but not least, much of the existing gender bias, inequities and inequalities are embedded in organizational and business cultures that have been prevalent for a very long time. While it may not be written or documented anywhere, the organizational culture is an important indicator of the way employees, including working mothers, are perceived and treated. Revisiting it can help in understanding the barriers standing in the way of working moms, especially in the midst of the current pandemic, and devise ways to lessen or eliminate these entirely.
What are other ways for organizations to help working moms this year?
New year, new transitions. While the rest of the world is busy setting goals it may or may not accomplish in the next twelve months, what is barely spoken about is the challenging need to transition from one year to the next. When it comes to work, this transition can be a rather daunting one, especially for many, if not most working women and moms taking into the new year increased responsibilities on the home and career front. As we’re still in the midst of an ever-growing pandemic, what with faltering childcare, a growing career “Great Resignation” phenomenon, and the constant debate around vaccinations, making it from one year to the next at work has become quite the difficult process.
As a working woman and mom, you may have felt the pressure of everything going around you, in addition to the usual pressure you normally face. I know I sure have…And while you may be caught up in the day-to-day haze of unending to-do’s and items to cross of your list, you may even not have given much thought of making a clean professional transition from last year. Yet, especially in the trying times we’re living in, it’s much needed. Every career year brings with it its weight of needed (and not-so-needed) changes, especially the last one we’ve been through. So much has changed, and is still bound to change, in the way we work and live, from the advent of remote work to the new rules of quarantine, that we cannot ignore the impact it has on our careers as we move into what feels like a new era…
If you’ve been contemplating the last year and are wondering about how to make the best of this transition at work, as so many of us are, here are some tips that may help:
Refresh your sense of purpose
If there ever is a time to refresh our sense of purpose in our careers, especially as working women and moms, it is certainly at the beginning of a new year, especially as we close a previous difficult one. It’s the opportunity to start again with a fresh slate, a fresher sense of who we are and what we want out of our work.
What are the areas and activities that truly bring you fulfillment? What are those tasks that bring your energy levels up instead of draining you? Where do you find yourself come alive? What parts of your work tap into your natural gifts and talents? These are the areas, tasks and activities that, knowingly or unknowingly, are aligned with your sense of purpose. Reminding yourselves of these, or uncovering them for the first time, can help re-awaken the purpose inside of you and guide you to seek to incorporate more of these into your current work, or move towards work that includes them.
You can also ask these questions of those around you who may provide you with an insight you may not have yourself.
Honestly assess the prior year
Your career is a living, breathing process that is supposed to evolve from year to year. However, this evolution can only occur when you’re willing to honestly assess the past as you move towards the future of your career. This requires you to connect the dots from year to year, asking yourself simple yet deeply revealing questions such as:
How did you feel about the last year of your career? (fulfilled, drained, overwhelmed, satisfied…etc)
What worked well?
What didn’t work so well?
Was last year aligned with your sense of purpose as described above?
These are also questions to ask of those around you at work, including your management and team. You can also consult your performance review for insights into these from others’ perspectives.
Now connect the dots…
Refreshing your sense of purpose and honestly assessing the last year of your career will help you connect the dots as the to the future of your career.
What needs to change?
Based on your sense of purpose and the last year of your career, how are you defining career success in this season? What would you need to do to achieve your own definition of career success, in your current or in a different role?
These three steps to transition from one career to another may seem simple, yet are loaded with information and insights to help you successfully move from one season of your work to another. Most importantly, they will help you set the appropriate, meaningful and purposeful goals for yourself in this new season.
In this episode, we usher in the new year by redefining how women set goals. Here, I’m discussing the research-backed gender differences in how women set goals, and what they mean for working women and moms. I’m also sharing three tips to leverage these differences and set goals in a more authentic, adapted and effective way as working women and moms.
Thanks so much for tuning in and listening to this week’s episode! If you enjoyed this week’s episode, please share it by using the social media at the bottom of this post!
Also, leave me a review for the TCS podcast on Apple Podcasts !
