Employee engagement lifts when leaders communicate well.
The challenge for leaders who take care of both in-person and remote teams is to achieve efficiency and create high-trust emotional connections at the same time.
“There is deep value in coordinated, collective time,” wrote Brian Elliott, author of How the Future Works: Leading Flexible Teams to Do the Best Work of Their Lives (2022).
In a December 2024 video for the MIT Sloan Management Review, he said:
“There’s clearly something that happens when humans are together for a few days, preferably spending at least half our time socially and getting to know one another through meals, team-building activities, and volunteer opportunities.”
For one week each year, typically in December, TOA Global hosts our clients for TOAconnect in the hopes of creating that “coordinated, collective time”.
We recommend that our clients—and there are now more than 1,200 who work with more than 3,700 accountants, bookkeepers, and other professionals in the Philippines—spend this week with their offshore team.
Social connections at work
They can run in-person training or planning sessions in our TOA Global sites in Cebu, Clark, Manila, or Tarlac and attend the Year-End Party. We recommend simply spending time getting to know their team better over lunch or a team bonding session, which can be a bowling game, karaoke singing session, or a visit to their favourite hangout.
When Cadenze Partners from Sydney attended the 2025 Year-End Party for TOA Global Clark, they got to celebrate with two team members who were awarded for their fifth and ninth anniversaries.
“Yet amid the glam, we also paused for special tributes, honoring the resilience and community spirit shown in the wake of the recent devastation from Typhoons Uwan (international name: Fung-wong) and Tino (Kalmaegi).”
Both typhoons swept across the Philippines in November 2025.
Social connections at work can form whether a team shares the same office the whole year or spends much of their time working remotely on different continents.
But employee engagement can receive a boost when some moments take place in person, including:
- Onboarding.
- Launching major initiatives or reviewing major milestones.
- Training.
Weaving in simple social activities helps. Time together doesn’t have to involve something as out-of-the-ordinary as sky biking—although some of our visiting clients enjoyed doing that with their team.
It can be something as simple as taking a short walk-and-talk meeting.
Check out this example from Accounting Professionals. After attending the TOAcon growth summit in December 2025 in Boracay Island, leaders of this accounting and business advisory firm from New South Wales bonded with their team.
Drivers of employee engagement
Employee engagement takes root in meaningful work, strong professional relationships, and clear opportunities for growth.
It’s something that teachable leaders of accounting practices can achieve when they listen and stay attuned to the changing needs of their teams.
Simply put, “employee engagement measures the enthusiasm workers feel for their work and their attachment to their team and organization, and it directly affects team performance and business outcomes,” wrote Ryan Pendell, Senior Workplace Science Editor at Gallup, on the State of the Global Workplace 2025 Report.
Of course, our clients can visit their teams anytime during the year and not just during TOAconnect. For instance, DFK Benjamin King Money from Richmond, Melbourne visited their team in Clark, Pampanga and worked side by side with them about a month before the year-end holidays.
Your choice: In-office, flexible work, or fully remote
TOA Global’s clients choose whether to have their teams work in-office, on a flexible work arrangement that lets them work from home two or three days a week, or fully remote. It depends on what they need.
Whatever option they choose, each accounting practice leader who builds their outsourced accounting team with TOA Global receives:
- Dedicated support for themselves, their onshore staff, and their teams.
- Sustained training support throughout their team’s careers at TOA.
- An employee engagement program that puts their team’s wellbeing first.
The State of the Global Workplace 2025 Report
Ask us anything about building and leading your own outsourced accounting team, a dedicated group that can execute your plans for your business’ growth.
We’ve focused on accounting outsourcing since 2013 and can help you make the most of this strategic move. Book a chat with our Gold Coast team soon.