A talent reality for all executives is that it’s far less expensive to retain good people than to hire them. In no corporate discipline is that truer than finance — especially at growing companies, which must continually replenish their accounting staff as they scale up.
A new report on talent retention from the Pennsylvania Institute of Certified Public Accountants (PICPA) is aimed at informing accounting firms, but many of its insights are relevant to other companies employing CPAs.
PICPA surveyed two groups for its study:
- 449 CPAs and other accounting professionals in Pennsylvania with three to 10 years of experience. This is called the current talent group.
- 323 CPAs and other accounting professionals nationwide with zero to 15 years of public accounting experience who had left either their employer or the profession within the past five years. This is called the career changers group.
PICPA identified several key findings from the research:
There is no quick fix to improving talent retention. It’s not a matter of simply offering more money, or any single solution, for that matter. When asked what would have increased their desire to stay at their previous employer or in the accounting field, the career changers group had a lot to say.
“The surveyed professionals left their firms or the profession for myriad reasons — with the top seven all being rated within a few points of each other,” PICPA wrote in its survey report. “When employees leave, it is typically because of the aggregated effects of a number of factors.”
Counseling employers to “retain the whole person,” PICPA provided a list of no fewer than 38 options that those employing accountants could offer in a bid to boost retention.
Most survey participants want to stay in the accounting profession and with their current firm. The current talent group was asked to rate, on a seven-point scale, their desire to stay in public accounting over the next five to 10 years. A majority (57%) rated that desire at five or higher, indicating a strong wish to stay.
When asked about their desire to remain with their current firm, 73% rated it at five or higher.
PICPA, noting that more accountants want to stay with their current employer than want to stay in the profession, said it could point to “an interesting point of competition.”
“Accounting firms are fighting more with outsiders than with competing firms,” the report said. “It’s not enough to be a more appealing employer than other firms. Your value proposition needs to compare favorably against the broader labor market.”
Workload management in the accounting field is broken. Survey participants were asked what would increase their desire to stay with their employer or the accounting field. For the current talent group, the top response was working hours being capped (for example, at 40-50 hours per week).
Heavy workloads are “hurting recruitment and retention of staff, and have become a self-perpetuating problem,” PICPA wrote. “If your firm is serious about effective talent retention, you need to prioritize work-life balance strategies for your employees.”
Interestingly, for the career changers group, the top issue was not total hours worked, which was ranked sixth, but rather a desire for more flexible work options around hours and location.
While compensation is not everything it is, of course, important. Almost half (47%) of the current talent group said their desire to stay at their firm or in the profession would increase if salaries were higher.
“The profession still has work to do on increasing financial incentives,” PICPA said. “Progress is being made, but accounting is a pay-laggard among most financial professions.”