Mentoring ensures staff development

Page 14
March 20, 2009

THE Head of Professional Development of the Association of Certified Chartered Accountants, Mr Tony Osude, has underscored the need for organisations to establish an effective mentoring system for staff development.
He said they should also make coaching and mentoring processes available to all staff members.
Mr Osude made the call in a presentation on “Importance of Coaching and Mentoring to Finance Professionals” in Accra last Tuesday.
He said it was incumbent upon organisations to develop finance professionals as coaches and include coaching as part of the training available to all finance professionals.
He stressed the need to establish an external and/or internal coach faculty, and “formally appoint and accredit coaches, establish objectives, methodologies, milestones and measurable outcomes”.
“If this is successful, coaching should become a way of doing business,” he said.
The Country Manager of ACCA, Ms Gifty Ofori, said the programme had been designed for “our approved employers as well as potential employers”.
She said it was to help build the capacity in managing and mentoring the finance person, saying that ensuring the high performance of all employees of the association was paramount.
“This is particularly true for the finance profession as we see greater responsibility and reliance on accountants and finance professionals in making critical business decisions in safeguarding the future success of organisations” he said, adding that “the role of the finance professional has become critically important, now more than ever.”
Ms Ofori said presently the world was facing challenges as the global economy was facing its most severe test in many years, and as the future looked uncertain, “history tells us that those companies that are best placed to survive the economic challenges are those organisations that have continued to invest in recruiting, developing and retaining talented people”.
She said the ACCA approved employment programme had been designed to help employers to derive maximum value from their finance staff, and that the programme enabled professionals to benchmark their training and development practices against ACCA’s best practice training standards.