How can you teach new employees about financial statements and reports?

Teaching financial reporting skills to new employees without a finance or accounting background can be challenging. To assist mentees at my workplace, we did the following: Break down the material into segments, ensuring each is understood before moving to the next. Keep it systematic and simple, with exercises to gauge understanding. Provide self-study assignments for employees to complete after each learning session. This helps assess their comprehension levels effectively. Offer feedback on mistakes made during learning. Trainer feedback is crucial for guiding new employees in mastering financial reporting

One effective method I've used in training and development is peer mentorship. New employees not only get the chance to learn from seasoned peers with firsthand experience of the initial uncertainties that come with joining a new team, but fosters experience and technique sharing that contributes to the overall change management strategy. It also accelerates the onboarding process and fosters a strong culture of support and team spirit building as each hire is peered to a mentor for the first 3 months. It complements our hands-on learning tools and methods, which are supplemented by comprehensive and regularly updated training manuals. Together, these resources have a proven track record of rapidly bringing employees up to speed.

Roll play with team again and observe the way they are explaining or demonstrate the things and second time again tell them where they were did the mistakes..

Simple and relatable examples are always appreciated. Create basic exercises which start with transactions and include the visual of a flow chart feeding transactions to the financial statement. Active, visual and relatable.

To teach new employees about financial statements and reports, ensure they understand the common language of finance, the impact of decisions, and the financial statements overview. This includes the Balance Sheet, Income Statement, and Cash Flow Statement. Annual reports summarize financial performance and strategy, while department operating reports should be accessible and easy to understand. Encouraging regular review of these reports can help maintain financial literacy, benefiting both the organization and individual employees, leading to a stronger, more informed workforce.

While working to understand financial reporting is helpful, it takes time to become an expert at reading earnings reports, etc. To accelerate building expertise: 1) Help employees find tools that will aid them in understanding financial reporting: What are the best trade papers for your industry? What news publication has the most insightful earnings summary? 2) Provide job aids to allow employees to unpack financial statements in team meetings or other forums. For example, as a manager, you might create a community of learning in which your team spends 15-minutes discussing earning reports each quarter.