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Knowing your team's learning styles is good for business

Anna Stubbs • June 21, 2023

Why is it important to be aware of your own, and your team’s, learning styles? Knowing how each of your staff members best learn can enhance communication skills, improve performance and make your new-hire processes better. It can also reduce conflict and increase the range of communication strategies used in your business.


Everyone learns differently and while we’ve known this for centuries, the VARK modalities, developed by New Zealander Neil Fleming in 1987, were the first to offer a quiz with help sheets so people could use it to learn and teach better. VARK stands for Visual, Aural, Read/Write, and Kinaesthetic. The idea is that we use one (or a mixture) of these modalities when learning information.



Whether it’s rules, guidelines, job changes, systems, and processes, or change within the business, it’s your job to ensure staff learn in the best way for them. Once you know how each of your staff learns (there is a range of online quizzes), assess your communication channels, and adapt them to ensure no one misses out on valuable information.

New ways to communicate with staff

How you best learn could influence the way you’re delivering information to your staff. To make sure you cover all your teams’ learning needs, pick a selection of these communication approaches:

  1. Visual: Learn by seeing - Charts, graphs, flow charts, lesson outlines, picture aids, and symbolic arrows, circles, hierarchies, and other devices used instead of words.
  2. Aural: Learn by hearing - Reading aloud, verbal instructions, discussions, repeating to a colleague, oral feedback, email, phone conversations, texting, discussion boards, oral presentations, classes, tutorials, and talking with other students and teachers.
  3. Read/write: Learn by reading and writing - Manuals, reports, essays, assignments, PowerPoint, lists, diaries, dictionaries, quotations and words, words, words…

Kinaesthetic: Learn by doing - Demonstrations, simulations, videos, and movies of “real” things, as well as case studies, practice, and applications. If it can be grasped, held, tasted, or felt, it will resonate!

Making Tax Digital to be extended to more sole traders and landlords

By Anna Stubbs • April 9, 2025
Hiding in the HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) announcements published on 26 March was a technical note entitled ‘Modernising the tax system through Making Tax Digital‘. This note announces that the income threshold for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax & Self Assessment (or MTD for ITSA) is to drop to £20,000 per annum for sole traders and landlords. If you fall into this category, this means moving your tax completely over to digital by April 2026. But don’t worry, let’s see what MTD for ITSA is all about.

Reducing the uncertainty: financial forecasting and planning

By Anna Stubbs • April 9, 2025
Uncertainty can be a major threat to your strategic financial planning. Being unsure of what lies around the corner makes it difficult to make those important financial decisions around operational budgets, investment and growth funding. But by using forecasting and scenario-planning, you make it easier to manage your finances and reduce some of the financial uncertainty.

What's new in Xero (Spring 2025)

By Anna Stubbs • April 9, 2025
Some great new enhancements have come to Xero in the first few months of the year, here's some important features that have been released: Enhancements to the new invoicing Keyboard shortcuts. Drag and drop attachments. Date Picker quick select. Exchange rate adjustments in the invoice. Tracking categories for invoices. Automated bill entry The ability to upload bills directly to Xero, create one or many bills by dragging and dropping multiple files. Xero creates draft bills with the key details, and the original document is attached. Other important features (region dependent) Bank feed updates (Australia adds Suncorp Bank, United States gains PNC Commercial). Simplified whole operations with improved sales orders (United States). Easier 1099 reporting and filing (United States). Streamlined tax workflow and compliance (United Kingdom). Easier reporting (United States Schedule C compliance report, New Zealand not-for-profit tier 3 & 4 PBE reports). For the full breakdown read Xero's update .
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