Thought Leadership News

Here, Dee France, Member & Student Support and Well-being Lead at Chartered Accountants Ireland, explores what diversity and inclusion means in the workplace, the important role it plays for employee well-being, and why employers should foster a culture of belonging and inclusion. Diversity and inclusion (D&I) has become a driving force in the changing organisational landscape. Companies and business leaders are placing greater emphasis on their approach to D&I and are embracing policies and strategies to create a more diverse, fairer, and resilient workforce.  Employee well-being and D&I are closely connected. In fact, employee well-being awareness can be seen as an intrinsic element of a company’s effective D&I strategies and policies.  An essential and significant feature of good overall well-being is our feeling of purpose and belonging. Programmes and initiatives that promote inclusion, diversity, and belonging can support and cultivate positive employee well-being. In its entirety, D&I in the workplace can have an impact on our overall happiness at work.  Emotional tax Employees from diverse backgrounds who experience a non-inclusive workforce can face an additional burden of an ‘emotional tax’ – the experience of being treated differently from peers due to race/ethnicity or gender, triggering adverse effects on health and feelings of isolation and making it difficult to thrive at work. This emotional tax can have an extremely negative impact on employees’ mental health and wellbeing. Feeling undervalued, overlooked, or excluded due to your identity can heighten a person’s vigilance to protect themselves from acts of bias or prejudice. Thrive, Chartered Accountants Ireland’s dedicated well-being hub, continues to receive regular calls from our members and students who seek support from the damaging impact a non-inclusive workplace can have on their wellbeing.   Managing diversity and inclusion  Implementing effective and successful D&I strategies and policies can take time, but a coherent and structured approach to these ensure that work practices and values support an inclusive culture that embraces different people, views, and perspectives. Producing a D&I policy allows a company to go above and beyond legal obligations and set a standard of expectation for the organisation and for its employees.  There are several ways companies can begin to incorporate inclusivity into the workplace.  Leadership and employee training  Providing training for leadership, management and employees increases awareness, aids the understanding and engagement in the company’s values and policies, helps embed these initiatives into the culture of the workplace, and allows for the development of empathy for others.  Employee network groups  Building an employee network group is an effective way to allow people to connect with others from different groups, and raise a sense of belonging, affinity, and kinship.  For example, the Institute has several different committee groups such as Balance, our LGBTQ+ committee, Student Committee, and D&I committee.  Open communication and feedback  Developing open and clear communication channels that are easily accessible to employees breeds better dialogue. It ensures employees and managers alike feel safe in airing grievances, giving feedback, and the feeling of being heard and valued.  Employee surveys on D&I initiatives allow companies to take onboard employees’ experiences and action feedback. It permits companies to assess if policies and strategies are working and evaluate and benchmark their efforts from year-to-year.  The Thrive Wellbeing Hub provides counselling, wellness coaching, practical advice and more to all members of the Institute. You can contact the Thrive wellbeing team by visiting our website, via email at: thrive@charteredaccountants.ie, or by phone: +(353) 86 0243294. 

Thought leadership can be highly effective in professional services marketing, especially for accountancy firms. By showcasing expertise, firms can enhance their reputation and attract clients. Mary Cloonan explains how In today's competitive business-to-business landscape, thought leadership has emerged as a vital marketing strategy, especially for the accountancy profession. By establishing themselves as industry experts, firms can differentiate their services, build trust and attract high-value clients. Outlined below are seven steps you can take to enhance your firm’s marketing offering through the medium of thought leadership. Establish authority: thought leadership positions firms as knowledgeable leaders in their field. By consistently sharing insights, research and expert opinions, they demonstrate their expertise and reliability. Enhance brand visibility: regular publication of thought-provoking content can help firms stay top-of-mind among potential clients and industry peers. This increased visibility can lead to greater brand recognition and credibility. Build trust and relationships: clients are more likely to trust and engage with firms that provide valuable, insightful content. Thought leadership can foster long-term relationships by demonstrating a deep understanding of industry challenges and solutions. Drive business growth: thought leadership content can generate leads by attracting professionals seeking expert advice. It helps in converting prospects into clients by showcasing the firm's ability to solve complex problems. Validate and engage: content published by thought leaders acts as a validation point, which can reinforce your firm's expertise. This content can be shared on social media and forwarded to clients and prospects, further extending its reach and impact. Differentiation: in a crowded market, thought leadership sets firms apart. By sharing unique perspectives and innovative solutions, firms can differentiate themselves from competitors. Continuing Professional Development (CPD): Hosting, or offering to participate in, CPD events and workshops can help to educate clients on industry trends and also demonstrate the firm's expertise, fostering a culture of continuous learning and professional growth. How to implement thought leadership content To implement your thought leadership content, consider the following: Content creation: publish whitepapers, blogs and research reports regularly and bear in mind that this can be more effective if the research is industry-specific. Speaking engagements: participate in industry conferences and webinars. Social media: leverage platforms like LinkedIn to share insights and engage with your audience. Client education: host CPD events to educate clients on industry trends. The power of thought leadership For accountancy and advisory firms, thought leadership can be more than just a marketing tactic. It can offer a strategic approach to building authority, fostering trust and driving growth. By consistently demonstrating expertise and providing value, firms can create lasting client relationships and achieve sustainable success. Moreover, leveraging published content as validation on social media and for client communications amplifies its effectiveness with a view to building credibility with prospective clients. Mary Cloonan is the founder of Marketing Clever.

Organisational practices and culture often drive workplace conflicts. Ian Brinkley examines the impact of conflict and how it can be resolved and prevented in the future The modern workplace is often a place of harmonious or at least tolerable relationships, but sometimes things go wrong. Ranging from one-off tiffs to more serious and systematic incidents, conflict can occur even in the best run workplace. In early 2024, the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development (CIPD) conducted a large-scale workplace survey in the UK focused on the incidence, impact and resolution of conflict. What is conflict? According to the survey, conflict included feeling humiliated or undermined at work, being shouted at or in a heated argument, verbal abuse, unfair allegations, sexual and physical harassment, intimidation and assault and discrimination for a protected characteristic such as race, gender, disability or age. (The survey question did not mention religion.) About 25 percent of the UK workforce reported at least one form of conflict in the preceding 12 months. The most common conflicts involved being humiliated or undermined at work, being shouted at, followed by verbal abuse and discrimination linked to a protected characteristic. The most serious incidents, such as sexual and physical assault were thankfully rare. Most attention focuses on formal processes such as industrial tribunals, grievances and mediation as a means to resolve disputes. However, in practice, very few reported conflicts ever make it to this stage – just one percent ended up in employment tribunals, for example. The most common reactions are informal. About half of those who reported conflict reported that they let it go. Involving managers and HR was the second most common way of resolving conflict. Unresolved conflict About two-thirds of conflicts are either fully or partially resolved. However, one-third are not resolved at all. Unresolved conflicts may not be escalated because they are not serious enough, especially “one-offs”, or because people fear the repercussions if they do. The survey does not tell us directly which is more likely, though evidence on the impact of the conflict suggests the former is more common. Most people who reported conflict also said they had good working relations with managers and colleagues. However, they were more negative when it came to specific actions – for example, whether they were always treated fairly. We think this apparent contradiction is down to people making a distinction between working relations in general and specific incidents. Conflict also had relatively little impact on voluntary effort. Those who reported conflict were almost as likely to say they were willing to work harder than they needed to in order to help their organisation and just as likely to say they would help colleagues under pressure or make innovative suggestions. However, we do find a clear negative association between conflict and a range of other indicators of the quality of work. For example, those who report conflict are much more likely to say work had adversely affected their mental health and that they experienced excessive workloads and work pressures most or all of the time. We cannot tell from the survey whether the conflict was the cause of these negative impacts or whether workplaces, where work quality was already poor, are more likely to suffer conflict. Both are likely to be true. A decrease in workplace conflict The survey asked about conflict in 2019 and since then there has been a significant decrease from 30 to 25 percent of the workforce. There are, however, two important caveats. First, the improvement was largely confined to older white males in permanent, higher-skill white-collar jobs without disabilities. There was little or no improvement for the young; those in temporary or zero-hours jobs and short-hour contracts or those with disabilities, ethnic minorities and women. Non-heterosexual workers also saw less conflict over this period, but it still remains at a high level. In 2024, the latter groups reported significantly higher levels of conflict than the former, and since 2019 that gap has widened. Second, the fall in conflict has also been greatest for those groups that saw the biggest rise in home-working. Those who work at home are less likely to report conflicts such as being shouted at or subject to verbal abuse. Reducing workplace conflict No strategy to improve the quality of work can fully succeed unless the incidence of conflict is reduced, especially among the “left behind” groups. Improving the relative bargaining power of those who are more likely to report conflict may help. Legislative change focusing on formal dispute resolution may be justified but is unlikely to make much difference to the overall incidence of workplace conflict. The biggest impact is going to be from organisational practice. Improving work quality in workplaces with below-average work quality is an obvious priority, but even well-run organisations can suffer conflict. In both cases, mitigating some of the underlying causes of conflict, such as excessive workload combined with helping line managers manage conflict better in the future, will be required if progress is to be made over the next five years. Ian Brinkley is a labour market economist