Unlocking dual impact: How to deliver transformative learning for your firm and team

It’s no secret that the accounting profession is experiencing a period of rapid change. Firms are working hard to adapt, finding new ways to attract talent, deliver value to clients, and stimulate growth, while accounting professionals are racing to stay one step ahead of shifting client demands and a seemingly endless stream of new technology.

To keep pace with this transformation, firms and individuals must be prepared to embrace new skill sets, career paths, and even mindsets—or risk falling behind and losing valuable clients. While this shift may seem daunting, it presents a unique opportunity to future-proof your firm and career by unlocking the dual impact of learning and development (L&D).

What is dual impact L&D? It’s an approach that leverages learning to maximize benefits for employees and the organization—not one or the other. If your learning is structured to help employees advance, add value, and explore potential career paths, your firm gains a more skilled, motivated, and loyal workforce to deliver the growth you need. That’s the magic of dual impact. And with over a decade of experience in this field, I’m here to show you how you can build it.

Approaching L&D with a growth mindset 

When done right, learning and development should be more than just teaching new team members how to use technology or keeping up with CPE requirements. Learning is a transformative process where knowledge acquired has the power to drive changes in long-term behavior. Yet, many firms struggle to build learning programs that drive the sustainable, transformative change they’re looking for.

With tight budgets and limited resources, it’s hard to create impactful training. And when learning doesn’t feel valuable, employees with limited resources of their own aren’t going to engage. The knowledge doesn’t stick, and you end up wasting time and money on ultimately ineffective programs. The hard truth is this: If you treat learning as a box to be checked, your team members will do the same.

Instead, the key to unlocking real, tangible results from your L&D is to design it with dual impact in mind. Rather than building a top-down program that teaches your employees where to click, ask yourself what skills and knowledge would help your team members grow in their careers. This was our approach at Intuit as we reimagined QuickBooks certifications and ProAdvisor Academy. How can we elevate this training from checking a box to providing a career-spanning learning journey that will engage and excite—all while delivering meaningful, measurable results for the employee and the firm?

Designing learning for the employee lifecycle

In speaking with the accounting community, it’s clear that firm leaders and employees recognize the value of professional development. However, there’s less recognition of how to design it to get the results you want.

Let me share an easy, actionable strategy based on years of hands-on experience, coupled with conversations with firm leaders who have already found the secret sauce of dual impact L&D. Let’s start with some good news: Learning doesn’t need to be expensive, time consuming, or complex to drive impact across the employee lifecycle. 

In case you’re not familiar, the employee lifecycle is a model that tracks an employee’s journey with a company, from the moment they first become aware of the company to their final day of employment.

There are three key stages here to focus on: onboard, engage, and grow.

Onboard: Setting the stage for success

The onboarding phase is critical for your larger L&D strategy and to set up new team members for success. You’re not just welcoming a new hire; you’re getting them up to speed on your firm’s processes, technology, and mission so that they can start delivering value as soon as possible. It’s also your only chance to make a great first impression.

Building an impactful onboarding program starts with setting a clear business goal. What would you like your new hires to achieve within their first 60 days? Once you have a goal, identifying a learner persona can help tailor the onboarding experience. The needs of a bookkeeper, for instance, differ vastly from those of a senior accountant.

From there, you need to define specific learning outcomes. What skills or knowledge does this individual need to meet that 60-day goal? Clear, actionable learning outcomes ensure that you and your employee know when they’ve succeeded, and allow you to narrow the training you offer out of the gate to increase the chances of success. Overloading employees with “too much too fast” or expecting employees to deliver without the knowledge they need are common onboarding pitfalls.

Within ProAdvisor Academy, this led us to introduce the all new Intuit Bookkeeping Certification. We saw that those new to the profession had to dive straight into the deep end, leaving a skills gap that made it difficult to onboard effectively. Now, you can meet entry-level hires where they’re at with a certification that teaches accounting fundamentals through a free, 30-hour self-paced program.

We’ve also redesigned the curriculum in our flagship QuickBooks Online certification programs so they’re specific, actionable, and contextualized to your accounting workflows. Learners start with the setup tasks needed to get the workflow up and running before moving on to the most frequent tasks, usually daily or weekly. Finally, it covers occasional monthly or ad hoc tasks. This makes the QuickBooks Level 1 certification perfectly tailored to deliver a bigger impact, faster.

Engage: Driving retention through learning

Once onboarded, employee engagement is key to keeping your team members motivated and retained. The secret to lasting engagement? A culture of continuous learning.

Where some organizations invest in employee onboarding but little else, a culture of continuous learning advocates for long-term employee development—from day 1 to day 1,000 . 

Of course, continuous learning doesn’t mean continuous training. Employee education comes in many forms, from courses, workshops, and other formal learning to book clubs, podcasts, and lunch-and-learns. No two employees learn the same, and your approach to learning should be targeted, dripped, and diversified if it’s going to be impactful and engaging in the long run.

Here are three principles that I’ve seen firms use to foster a culture of continuous learning: 

1. Know your audience. What keeps a veteran accounting professional engaged will be different from a non-traditional hire.
2. Don’t boil the ocean. There’s no need to learn everything in two weeks. Space out formal training to tailor knowledge delivery and reduce fatigue.
3. Mix it up. Variety is the spice of life, so keep it interesting. Include certifications, shadowing, coffee chats, and more.

Try breaking down your learning activities by frequency. The higher the frequency of the activity, the less intense it should be, and vice-versa. Here’s an example:

We designed ProAdvisor Academy with a continuous learning environment in mind. Media-rich coursework that mirrors on-the-job tasks and workflows helps team members level up through more advanced QuickBooks certifications while staying engaged. But ProAdvisor Academy also complements formal training with a variety of learning experiences and situations to increase diversity and cater to different learning styles. With our In the Know program, for example, team members can join the live webinar or catch on-demand episodes to learn about our latest innovations or join live webinars and virtual conferences.

Grow: Creating opportunities for advancement

Growth is the final piece of the puzzle. Managers and firm leaders can play a vital role in helping team members map out their career paths and achieve their short- and long-term goals—whether that means moving up the ladder or making lateral moves into new roles. Through career pathing, employees gain a roadmap for where they want to go, while identifying what competencies, or craft skills they’ll need as they advance. Craft skills include accounting knowledge, people skills, and strategic problem solving, among others.

Once you bring together the concepts of career pathing and craft skills for your team members, you can align learning opportunities that help them get there. It’s this intersection where it makes sense for you to invest.

Once you bring together the concepts of career pathing and craft skills for your team members, you can align learning opportunities that help them get there. It’s this intersection where it makes sense for you to invest.

Where your team members are ready to grow in skills and knowledge, our training is there to meet them. As they progress from QuickBooks Level 1 to Level 2 certification, learners are presented with more complex workflows, and sophisticated tools and features within the platform. To meet the evolving needs of the accounting profession, Level 1 now includes “light touch advisory” to help lay the groundwork to enrich client service, and Level 2 dives deeper into advisory opportunities throughout.

ProAdvisor Academy also offers speciality certifications in high-demand practice areas to deepen expertise, such as our QuickBooks Payroll Certification. Your team members can balance the courses they need to succeed in their current role with the learning that will help launch them into the next stage of their careers.

Learning is a strategic investment

Viewed through the lens of dual impact, learning isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s a powerful strategy to attract and retain talent, engage your team, and enrich client service. Thoughtful, targeted learning investments at each stage of the employee lifecycle lay the foundation for a dynamic, motivated team that delivers significant returns for employees and the firm.

And the best part? It doesn’t need to be expensive, time consuming, or difficult. ProAdvisor Academy is completely free for ProAdvisors, and offers an invaluable, career-spanning foundation for your L&D strategy.

At the end of the day, learning should never be about ticking a box. It’s about seeing a positive ROI on a program that delivers impact for your people who deliver impact for your firm.