Search this site

Is it nature or nurture? Are leaders born or made? It’s an important question, because if you believe that leadership is a genetic predisposition, you had better make sure your talent acquisition strategy is first class. On the other hand, if you think leadership can be taught and developed in people, you need to have the processes and resources in place to give talented candidates the hard and soft skills they need. In my experience, most businesses will mix and match. They will recruit new leaders and also promote from within. But the prevailing wisdom favours an educational route to leadership in business. Some people arrive in your organisation fully formed, with the talent, drive and charisma to be leaders, but arguably they are likely to be a minority. Many more will have a potential that needs to be nurtured. Doing so is critical to moving our firms forward, and maintaining stability of knowledge – the foundations to grow. More than anything else, good leadership candidates can future-proof your business, and help set tomorrow’s agenda. But what does that nurture process entail? Here are a few ideas. Identify The Best Candidates How do you identify the next generation of leaders? In professional services, excellent technical skills are a given, but you are also looking for evidence of strategic thinking. Do they come to meetings with ideas? Do they proactively suggest new ways of doing things? Do they have a grasp of the bigger picture? Good candidates may naturally take the lead on projects, but not by being the loudest or most forthright voice in the room. Persuasion is often the natural result of good ideas and clear thinking. Train Them For Leadership Potential leaders will be keen to learn, and you should give them the resources that allow them to explore their natural curiosity. Management development programmes will target ‘hard’ leadership skills like commercial awareness and business development, but soft skills are just as important. Leaders don’t shout or snap orders anymore. They persuade and motivate. They know how to manage remote teams as well as in-house. They are the number one reason other talented people come to work for your business – and stay. Give Them Reason To Stay You need a retention strategy targeted towards your very best people. One study found that the top 25% of employees are four times more productive than average – and up to eight times more productive in specialist areas (such as tax, for example). Good people tend to know their worth. If you undervalue them, they will leave. This is not necessarily a question of money. According to recent Gartner research, people want ‘radical flexibility’, which means a degree of autonomy. They want to feel cared for, so you need a wellbeing strategy. They want to have a sense of purpose and shared values. Perhaps more than anything, they want opportunities for personal growth. In terms of your leadership candidates, this could be the clincher. Give Them A Path To Success In short, your best people could leave if they do not see a path to progression. The end of that path cannot be in some distant fairytale future. Top talent needs to know that good work, commitment and the acquisition of new skills and knowledge will be rewarded with promotion. They need to know with certainty the steps they have to take to make the next rung of the ladder, and when – all being well – they can expect to achieve it. Larger organisations may implement formal leadership identification and development processes. Smaller ones may follow more informal paths, but the result should be the same. Employees with leadership potential should know how that potential is to be developed and when it will lead to concrete progress. At UHY a development priority is to encourage our leaders of the future, from formal and informal webinar and conference learning around succession planning, to providing an annual leadership forum in Spain. The UHY Forum has run since 2002 and forum alumni have gone on to achieve remarkable success in member firms throughout the UHY network. UHY’s current international chairman and the managing partner of UHY Hacker Young (London & Nottingham) in the UK, Subarna Banerjee, is an alumnus of the UHY Forum and there are many other alumni members who are now in significant leadership roles across our network. Nurture First Why is any of this important? Can you simply go out to the market and recruit the leadership talent you need? The answer is that often you cannot find the ‘right fit’ person – whatever the ‘right fit’ is! Variety of experience brings its own rewards to an organisation in the form of new ideas and developing culture. Fully formed talent is in short supply and highly valued (which makes it expensive). In the era of post-pandemic working, where great employees and potential recruits have a new-found sense of self – and arguably more bargaining power – I believe that nurturing your next generation of leaders from within is more necessary than ever. The good news is that your next management candidate is probably in your organisation already. You just have to let their promise flourish. For more information, contact Alan Farrelly, Managing Director, UHY Farrelly Dawe White Limited alanfarrelly@fdw.ie #2022 #LatestTopics #Leadership #UHYGlobal

The new 2022 global members’ directory is now available. You can now view our member firm offices and their full contact details online or download a PDF version. For more information about UHY’s sectors and services, view our Why UHY? leaflet. Download 2022 UHY Global Directory Request a printed copy of our 2022 UHY Global Directory – email nicolamernagh@fdw.ie Contact our Team Today Contact our team with any queries you have Call us +353 42 933 9955 Email us info@fdw.ie #2022 #UHYGlobal

The new Why UHY? leaflet is now available. You can now view our full sectors and services, and a list of countries, by region, served by our member firms online or  download a PDF version. For more information about uhy member firm offices and their full contact details, view our 2022 UHY Global Directory Download Why UHY? Request a printed copy of our 2022 UHY Global Directory – email nicolamernagh@fdw.ie Contact our Team Today Contact our team with any queries you have Call us +353 42 933 9955 Email us info@fdw.ie #2022 #UHYGlobal

View our Tax Book 2022 which has all the taxation information you will need covering topics such as Income Tax Rates, COVID-19 Supports, Retirements & Pensions, VAT and much more reflecting all changes announced in Budget 2022. Download the UHY FDW Tax Book Request a printed copy of our Tax Book 2022 – email nicolamernagh@fdw.ie Download Contact our Tax Team Today Contact our team with any queries you have Call us +353 42 933 9955 Email us info@fdw.ie #2022 #BusinessGuide #TAX #Tax2022

“The effects from Brexit are still being felt” The April 2022 edition of Business Plus magazine is now available to read on your mobile device or desktop. The month’s issue features our very own Alan Farrelly, Managing Director and founding partner of UHY FDW. In this issue Alan provided an insight into a number of topics such as staffing challenges and effects of the pandemic and Brexit. Click here to read this edition of the Business plus magazine.  #BusinessGuide #2022 #BusinessAdvisory #UHYFDWTeam #Brexit

International Video Marks UHY’s 35th Anniversary UHY’s global network is 35 years old. In October 1986 and March 1987 the two founding firms Urbach Kahn & Werlin, US, and Hacker Young, UK, came together and launched Urbach Hacker Young (UHY) International in New York and in London. Today, with independent member firms in over 100 countries, UHY is a top 20 global accountancy network. (Source: International Accounting Bulletin World Ranking Survey) We hope that UHY – The Network for Doing Business video offers a flavour of how member firms work together across borders to support clients and help them reach their international goals; how our people work in a client-focused collaborative culture which sets UHY apart from others; and how the global footprint means clients can ask UHY experts for help and advice in over 100 countries – and growing. For more information, visit our UHY page or visit  UHY International . #UHYGlobal #2022 #BusinessinIreland #BusinessAdvisory #UHY35thAnniversary

TRAINING EQUIPS YOUR TEAM FOR BETTER CLIENT SERVICE Clients expect professional service providers to offer the most up to date expertise and advice. Naturally, they expect us to be familiar with relevant legislation changes, regulatory reform, reporting standards and so on. But rightly, they demand more. They want professional service providers that are equipped with the latest skills to help their businesses thrive in a competitive world. And that mix of skills is changing, as a result of the pandemic and the march of technology. For that reason, training should never be seen as a one-off activity that happens as part of an employee’s onboarding process and never repeated. Training needs to be a continuous journey enabling both growth in knowledge and impact within the firm as well as on client projects. In a fast moving digital world, knowledge that is current today can soon become obsolete. In fact, it has been calculated that the half-life of a work skill is four years. This could mean that every four years our skills become half as valuable. That period is likely to be considerably shorter for technology-based skills. THE KEY TO LOYALTY AND LONGEVITY To give our clients the best possible service and advice, we need to continually update our knowledge and upskill our workforce. That’s especially true after a shock such as the Covid pandemic, which highlighted the importance of digital skills around the world. But continual training serves another purpose. It helps organisations attract and retain the very best talent. It is generally recognised that top employees regard lifelong learning opportunities as a crucial employee benefit. It is easy to see why. Good employees want their firms to be successful. They also want to equip themselves to thrive in an uncertain future. Continual training is an effective way for employees to drive careers forward today, and to equip themselves for the career challenges of tomorrow, whether that means economic downturns or the encroachment of AI (artificial intelligence) into the world of work. Your top employees know that the skills that are useful today may be very different from those they will need in ten years’ time. Organisations that help them continually acquire new capabilities are likely to be rewarded with loyalty and commitment. LEARNING IS SECURING YOUR FUTURE A key point to recognise is that learning comes in numerous forms. It can mean traditional off-site classroom-based courses, though these days it is just as likely to mean webinars and classes delivered online or over Zoom. Here at UHY we provide a comprehensive range of training webinars to our member firms around the world, aimed at continually updating both the technical and ‘soft’ skills required for effective performance, and expanding the knowledge base of our global network of great people. In a profession which is continually changing, it is important to ensure the business has all the right skills on board. But learning and development goes beyond formal classes and courses. It can encompass, for example, work shadowing and mentoring. At UHY, we encourage member firms to offer secondments. These can fill operational gaps in the short term, build the skills and knowledge of the individual concerned as well as support service delivery to the client. We find that secondment is especially invaluable when it happens across borders, because it brings our professionals first-hand knowledge of the challenges businesses face when they internationalise their operations. It also exposes them to different ways of solving problems, and helps us become more effective advisors to those of our clients with cross border ambitions. KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS ARE DIFFERENTIATORS UHY’s continual learning programme allows our professionals to update technical skills, keep up with wider developments in accountancy – whether they be international taxation guidelines or smarter tech solutions – alongside developing leadership, management, commercial and team-building skills. UHY offers lifelong learning and development opportunities because it is the right thing to do. Our network of talented people want long and fulfilling careers, and we want them to build those careers with us. By investing in their future, we are investing in the success of our clients. For more information, contact Alan Farrelly, Managing Director, UHY Farrelly Dawe White Limited alanfarrelly@fdw.ie #2022 #LatestTopics #UHYGlobal

Expert insight and analysis for world business The 13th edition of UHY Global magazine is now available to read online . UHY Global draws on the knowledge of UHY’s network of member firms to provide insight and expertise for today’s global business community in a thought-provoking, upbeat and engaging read. Topically wide ranging, many features demonstrate the breadth of expertise of UHY colleagues across the world, while others focus on news and global events. UHY Global magazine is a wide-ranging and diverse reading experience, exploring the issues and challenges of international business, themes that you may well be grappling with in today’s uncertain world. For example, the lead feature this time looks at the importance of digitalisation to the recovery of Southeast Asian economies, and how governments, businesses and individuals need to work together to plug gaps in digital infrastructure and skills. Other features focus on how the accounting profession is tackling the rise of money laundering, whether cryptocurrencies are becoming mainstream, and how Mediterranean economies are responding to Covid’s impact on tourism. There are also client stories from the network’s member firms in Slovenia and Spain. Issue 13 also includes: Client stories from Slovenia and Spain The latest member firm directory Service feature on international tax Listing of UHY services – and in the digital edition you can also click through to the new network video UHY Global’s online edition also gives you hyperlink access to source reports, additional graphics, narrative and direct contact details of UHY contributors – so if you want to find out more about any of our topics, UHY Global online makes it easy. If you prefer an offline read, the print version is downloadable as a PDF . UHY Global is not only a good read, it is also a source of valuable information about the UHY international network – our services, our commitment to quality, and a directory of offices in over 100 countries. Contact our team with any queries you may have T: +353 42 933 9955 E: info@fdw.ie #2022 #BusinessAdvisory #UHYGlobalIssue

As we emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic, the Government has eased public health restrictions and has reopened all sectors of our economy. There have therefore been amendments made to some supports provided and these are detailed below: CRSS This was a support scheme that the Government put in place to help support businesses that were significantly restricted from operating due to public health restrictions.  The Government agreed a removal of public health restrictions from 22 January 2022, therefore businesses will no longer qualify for the CRSS from that date. EWSS As part of Budget 2022, the government set out the future direction of EWSS including its graduated exit strategy. These arrangements were subsequently enhanced in response to the public health situation, namely the extension of the enhanced rates of subsidy for a further two months (across December 2021 and January 2022) and the reopening of the scheme for certain businesses as announced on 9 and 21 December 2021 respectively. The government agreed on 21 January 2022 that businesses availing of EWSS that were directly impacted by the public health regulations introduced in December 2021, would receive additional support under the scheme for February 2022 to assist these businesses as they fully reopen and emerge from the restrictions. Such businesses will continue to receive the enhanced rates of subsidy for the month of February and the graduated step-down in subsidy rates, as previously announced, will be delayed by one month with such firms continuing to receive support under the scheme until 31 May 2022. From 1 February 2022, most businesses, apart from those that were directly impacted by the public health restrictions of last December, moved to the reduced rate of support of €203 per employee, followed by the flat rate subsidy of €100 per employee for the final two months the scheme of March and April 2022. It should be noted that the full rate of Employers’ PRSI will be reinstated with effect from 1 March 2022 for all businesses, as announced in Budget 2022 and legislated for in the Social Welfare Act 2021. MEBAS The COVID-19 pandemic impacted on those in the live entertainment sector and as part of a suite of measures to support those in the sector, the Music and Entertainment Business Assistance Scheme was launched as a targeted support for businesses operating solely in the live entertainment sector that did not qualify for other business supports such as CRSS and were significantly impacted by restrictions introduced by the government under public health regulations to combat the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. This scheme closed at 1pm on 17 February 2022 Tax Debt Warehousing Scheme In relation to the Tax Debt Warehousing Scheme, and the decision by Government last month, to extend the period where tax liabilities arising can be warehoused to the end of Q1 2022, for all taxpayers eligible for COVID-19 support schemes, it has now been agreed that this date will be extended to 30 April 2022 to facilitate the two monthly VAT return for March/April. On1 May 2023, taxpayers must agree a Phased Payment Arrangement with Revenue for the warehoused debt. Interest will be applied from the start of Period 3 until the final payment date at a rate of 3%. Source: gov.ie For more information, contact Naill Donnelly, Tax Director: NiallDonnelly@fdw.ie or Jane Jackson, Head of Payroll and Tax Compliance: JaneJackson@fdw.ie #Covid #2022 #BusinessinIreland #HR #GrantScheme #TAX

UHY FDW has announced the appointment of Niall Donnelly as Tax Director. Niall joined UHY FDW in 2018 as Head of Corporate Tax Structuring, having previously worked in PWC Dublin. Niall’s experience is primarily in the area of corporate tax, in particular the financial services industry with a focus on insurance and asset management sectors, having worked in these sectors for over 6 years. More recently Niall has expanded his experience significantly into the areas of private client wealth protection and tax structuring and VAT consultancy for all industry sectors. This appointment follows the announcement of Martina Gribben as Audit Director in 2020 and Thomas McDonagh as Quality Director in 2017 and reflects the continued strong growth at the firm. Speaking today, Alan Farrelly said; “We are delighted to appoint Niall to our board of Directors.  Niall has proven to be a valuable member of our team and has expanded the tax team to a team of 12 professionals covering all tax heads. Niall provides excellent advice, assistance and re-assurance to the clients of the firm when dealing with all tax matters.  Niall’s appointment reflects the continued growth of UHY Farrelly Dawe White Limited, specialising in helping SME clients grow and expand nationally and internationally. This requires strategic planning and Niall and the tax team play a significant part in assisting clients in their business considerations.” UHY Farrelly Dawe White are a solutions-focused, Director Led, full-service practice based in Dundalk, Balbriggan, Dublin and Newry and are proud to provide a first-class, attentive and personal service to all of our clients; from large corporates to the individual owner-managed or family-run businesses. Being an agile and forward thinking firm, we help clients with their changing needs and can assist your business to grow both nationally and internationally. UHY Farrelly Dawe White Limited are proud members of the UHY international a network of audit, advisory and tax firms represented in 102 countries around the world with 350 offices and 9500 professionals. Through the UHY network we ensure that we have the reach and expertise to help you prosper. For more information, visit: Our Team #2022 #HR #UHYFDWTeam