The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt
2022. Wow. As we prepare to close out this year and anticipate heading into the next, we once again pause to reflect on all that has happened at Multi Business Solutions. For owner Megan Beckler, her dreams started as a tiny spark: a passion for QuickBooks and for helping businesses. Over the past fourteen years, that spark has kindled a bright future. We are grateful for this year’s opportunities for growth, and we can’t wait to see what the future holds.
Our Top 5 Accomplishments of 2022
5. Leadership
Entrepreneurs Organization Accelerator (EOA)
Megan continued as an Entrepreneurs Organization Accelerator (EOA) member and participated in the membership committee this year. If you are an entrepreneur looking to grow your business, consider joining this dynamic group. There is a virtual group option, as well, so if you are in the state of Minnesota, contact Megan for more information.
Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)
Natalie joined the Northeast South Dakota SHRM Board as the Secretary. She enjoyed getting better acquainted with other HR leaders in the Watertown area. If you have a business in the Watertown area, this is a great group to consider joining. They offer networking, information, professional development and continued support of excellence in Human Resources.
4. Client Onboarding and Growth
We focused on improving our new client onboarding processes and procedures. To assist us in this, we hired Raelynn Daku as our Onboarding Account Manager. Raelynn brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the team, and we feel very fortunate to have her with us. If you are a new client that had the privilege of working with her, we trust you felt the same!
We enjoyed seeing growth in our clients as we provided them with additional accounting and HR tools to help them be successful. By proactively reviewing metrics with our clients, we offered an outside perspective and viewpoints that they may not have considered. We continued to assist qualifying businesses with claiming Employee Retention Credits from the COVID-19 pandemic. We reviewed employee handbooks, job descriptions, job postings, terminations, and many other employee-related items to assist businesses that don’t have their own HR department.
For more details of how we have helped clients, check out our recent case studies here and here.
3. Employee Onboarding and Training
As a result of strong growth with our accounting and bookkeeping clients, we hired seven new Accounting Associates this year! Delaney Burchill, Jennifer Grant, Anita Benjamin, Luke Himmelspach, Erin Baseman, Alexis Burchill, and Judy Ramage have added so much to the team. They joined existing team members Paris Thorson, Melanie Shockey, Jazmine Hill, and Natalie Remund. Adding to our team allowed us to meet our growing client needs, while still delivering outstanding service.
We strived to welcome these new team members and make them feel part of the MBS Team. Utilizing the software Trainual, we significantly improved our training process by documenting all client activity with step by step tutorials, videos, and checklists. If you struggle with training new staff, we highly recommend utilizing an online Learning Management System, such as Trainual. We really upped our training game by eliminating paper files, Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, etc. and putting everything into one online resource that can be accessed from anywhere.
2. Best Place to Work
MBS was honored to be voted the 2022 Otter Tail County Best Place to Work. We know there are a lot of great workplaces in Otter Tail County – some with many more employees than we have – so we truly appreciate this award and all those who voted for us.
1. Strengthening Our Company Culture and Values
One of our largest initiatives for the year was to strengthen the culture of our company and ensure that we are living out the MBS values each day.
Most of us have heard of toxic workplace cultures. Intuitively, we have a good idea of what that looks and feels like (maybe we’ve even worked in one before). One definition of culture states it is the “attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that make up the regular atmosphere in a work environment.” However, defining a “positive” and “strong” culture can sometimes be challenging. Leadership may set the tone for the culture, but that tone is either diminished or magnified by the employees. A culture may develop unintentionally for what is “acceptable” and “not-acceptable” in how employees treat their manager, how they treat one another, how they treat their customers, and how accountable they are for their work.
Therefore, committing to the organization’s values is a key component of a positive workplace culture.
At MBS, we value reliability, growth, leadership, and being people-focused. To keep our values top of mind, we implemented a “values shout-out” at one of our weekly staff meetings. Each team member has an opportunity to recognize a manager, co-worker, or even a client for how they demonstrated our values. This has been well received by our staff and is something we all look forward to at each meeting.
To support our belief in giving back, MBS donated to over 16 non-profit organizations as part of Minnesota’s Give to the Max Day and Giving Tuesday. Each team member made an individual pledge, which was then matched by MBS.
To foster teamwork and bonding in a team that works primarily remotely, we made a commitment to get together at least once per quarter to connect in person and celebrate our accomplishments. This year’s quarterly celebrations included a springtime lunch and an escape room at Puzzled Escape Rooms; an overnight retreat at Forest Lodge Farms in the summer; golfing and snacking at Suite Shots in the fall; and a Christmas lights tour in a limo with dinner afterwards. We truly enjoyed the opportunity to get together to share stories and laughter.
Looking to the Future
Our purpose is to continue to spark progress by simplifying numbers and strengthening people. We will enable businesses to focus on their core functions by assisting them with their bookkeeping and personnel responsibilities. Our team of highly skilled staff will provide an “extra set of hands” to whatever bookkeeping or employee challenge a business is facing.
As you enter 2023, you may find your business could benefit from our bookkeeping or human resource services. If so, give us a call! We enjoy partnering with our clients as trusted advisors and coming along with them as they continue to grow and evolve in their business endeavors.
Thank you to our valuable clients and partners who contributed to our progress and growth in 2022.