Overview
Change has become a constant feature of professional practice. Tax practitioners are adapting simultaneously to an increasingly automated SARS, a heavier compliance load from CIPC, the Financial Intelligence Centre, UIF and the Compensation Fund, annual legislative amendments and generative AI. Many practices are also choosing to change, by expanding into advisory services, introducing practice management systems or rethinking how they price their work. Yet practices often focus their attention on what needs to change, without giving sufficient consideration to how people will experience, understand and implement those changes.
Change management can no longer be regarded as a specialist discipline reserved for large transformation projects. Most tax practices are small, and the principal usually both decides on a change and carries it through, often alongside a small team and always with clients on whose co-operation the change depends. The ability to understand, support and lead change has become an essential capability for practice principals, managers and leaders of in-house tax functions alike.
A useful starting point is recognising that organisational change and individual transition are not the same thing. A practice may introduce a new system, process, service or policy, but each person affected, whether practitioner, staff member or client, must make sense of what it means for them, let go of familiar ways of working and develop confidence in new ones. Change therefore has both a practical and an emotional dimension.
The webinar will explore why people sometimes struggle with change, even when the business case appears compelling. Uncertainty, perceived loss, concerns about competence, established habits, a lack of time and a lack of trust or information can all influence people's responses. Rather than treating resistance simply as an obstacle to overcome, participants will be encouraged to recognise it as valuable information about what people need and what could undermine successful implementation. The profession's hesitation over generative AI illustrates the point: concerns about accuracy, client confidentiality and POPIA, and professional liability are legitimate professional risks that a well-managed change must answer, not objections to be overcome.
The webinar will also introduce practical principles for supporting individuals through change, drawing on the ADKAR model to illustrate the importance of awareness, desire, knowledge, ability and reinforcement. The model will be applied to two changes that tax practices are managing now: moving from informal, individual use of AI tools to an agreed practice approach, and completing the implementation of Financial Intelligence Centre Act requirements that many practices have only partly embedded. Particular attention will be given to the difference between communicating that a change is happening and helping people, clients included, understand why it matters, what it means for them and what they need to do differently.
Leaders play a critical role in this process, at two levels. In a small practice, the principal must sponsor, model and sustain a change while carrying a full client load. In larger firms and in-house functions, managers are often expected to implement changes they did not initiate, while managing their own uncertainty and the concerns of their teams. In both settings, the ability to translate decisions into meaningful conversations, anticipate reactions, build confidence and reinforce new behaviours can significantly influence whether change succeeds.
Finally, the webinar will consider how a practice under sustained pressure from SARS correspondence, compliance deadlines and workload can strengthen its overall change capability. Rather than approaching each change as an isolated event, practices can sequence changes deliberately, protect time for learning and develop management and communication routines that make adaptation more effective and sustainable.
Participants will apply these principles to a change under way in their own practice or team, and will leave with a practical understanding of the human side of change, the role they can play in leading it and a structured change plan to take back to their practice.
Webinar Content
- Change management as a practice capability: Understanding the changes tax practices face, from SARS automation, compliance obligations and legislative amendment to generative AI and the move into advisory work, and why principals, managers and staff all need the ability to navigate and support change.
- Understanding the human side of change: Distinguishing between organisational change and individual transition, and exploring the emotional and psychological responses of practitioners, staff and clients when familiar ways of working change.
- Understanding resistance and what lies beneath it: Exploring common sources of resistance, including uncertainty, loss, perceived threats, lack of understanding and lack of time, and recognising resistance as useful information rather than simply opposition, with practitioners' concerns about AI-assisted work as a case in point.
- Helping people move through change: Introducing the ADKAR model as a practical framework for understanding what individuals need to adopt and sustain change, from awareness and desire through to knowledge, ability and reinforcement, applied to two practice scenarios: agreeing how AI tools are used, and completing the implementation of Financial Intelligence Centre Act requirements.
- The principal's and manager's role in leading change: Considering how practice principals sponsor and model change in a small practice, and how managers in larger firms and in-house functions translate change into everyday work, communicate meaningfully, anticipate concerns, support their teams and reinforce new behaviours.
- Working constructively with resistance, including from clients: Practical approaches to listening, asking better questions, addressing concerns and using feedback to strengthen change implementation, including when clients are asked to accept new services, fee arrangements, digital processes or documentation requirements.
- Building change capability under capacity pressure: Exploring how sequencing, communication, management practices, participation, protected learning time and reinforcement can help a practice adapt to ongoing change without overloading its people, concluding with a change plan for one change in each participant's own practice.
Competencies Developed
The webinar will help participants strengthen their ability to:
- Recognise change management as an essential practice and management capability, and identify the imposed and chosen changes the practice must manage.
- Distinguish between the practical implementation of a change and the individual transition that practitioners, staff and clients experience.
- Interpret resistance constructively, separating concerns that signal genuine professional risk from those rooted in habit, uncertainty or lack of time.
- Apply the basic principles of ADKAR to diagnose where a practice change has stalled and what individuals need to understand, adopt and sustain it.
- Communicate a change to staff and clients in terms of why it matters, what it means for them and what they need to do differently.
- Plan and sequence change in a practice under capacity pressure so that new ways of working are adopted and sustained.
Presenter
Craig Yeatman
Craig Yeatman is a partner at WorldsView Academy and an organisation design and development consultant, educator and facilitator. His work focuses on helping organisations improve their effectiveness by aligning strategy with organisational structures, management systems, leadership practices and team dynamics.
Craig combines practical experience in building and managing businesses with established thinking from organisation design, organisational development and management. He works with executives, senior managers and professional teams across different organisational settings, helping them examine how structures and systems shape behaviour and performance.
CPD
Attending this webinar and the successful completion of the online assessment will secure a certificate of completion for 2 hours of Tax CPD.
Event Investment
Free for Tax Practitioner, Tax Accountant CPD subscribers and Practice Packages. Not a CPD subscriber yet? Click here to register now.
- Regular price: R460.00
- Group booking discounts available when you register for a group.
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