Art of Accounting: 4 reasons staff remain with a firm

August 30, 2021 10:30 AM

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There can be a hundred reasons why people stay or leave a firm, but I’ve narrowed it down to four critical issues. Actually, I narrowed it down to three, but I was leading a discussion group last month and one of the participants (a fine colleague, Melanie Cobb) suggested a fourth. It was "flexibility," and I immediately added it to my list. The pandemic brought on many changes but an overriding change has been where we work. Yesterday, flexibility was never a major issue; today, it is.

The four issues are money, growth, experience, and flexibility. If any three are present, it is unlikely someone would leave. If all four are present, then anyone who would leave is not someone you should want to stay.

Growth

Most professionals want to grow. That means learning, working on new things, leveraging their abilities, and transitioning into their boss’s work. What is so unreasonable about this? If your practice is stagnant, with the same clients and everyone is doing the work they have always been doing, there would be no growth and good people would leave. It is the owners’ and partners’ jobs to make sure this doesn’t occur. This means added clients or a replacement of stagnant or legacy clients with new ones. Either way, the workflow needs to change and be elevated for the staff. It also allows for the growth of the owners and partners.

Experience

This ties into growth, but it is at the next level where staff apply what they learn to clients’ situations. It also implies the clients have to have more interesting, and certainly different, issues that need resolving or working on. It also requires the owners to pass down work or have the staff step up to it. This needs mentoring and oversight so there would be successful outcomes. It also needs closer staff interaction with clients at a higher level.

Flexibility

Work can now be done from anywhere. Home life and its integration with work has shifted and in many cases has morphed into a continuum where the work gets done around family activities rather than family actions revolving around the office. It has also created some negative side effects such as some expectations of emails or texts being responded to late into the night. This is not healthy and staff (and partners) need to be taught how to manage client expectations. Working at home in some cases can eliminate four hours a day of travel time. Dinners can occur with the family at dinner time and perhaps breakfast can be with the kids before they go to school. Staff are now looking for flexible working arrangements as long as their output, meeting deadlines, and availability for meetings are not interfered with. What needs to be learned is how to inject a firm culture throughout the staff.

Offer all four incentives at your firm and you will be set with your staff. Three out of four is also pretty good. One or two will not cut it, and you will have a practice doomed to stagnation at best.

On the money side, your staff may need a few more dollars to be paid. Fairness is also important, especially in not taking advantage by failing to pay for added work. Flexibility needs to be recognized as well. Growth and experience require conscious effort and serious work. Resolve to grow the practice as it will need to grow.

I suggest a review of your staff management policies for these four factors. I also suggest preparing a brief sketch of where you want your practice to be in five years and then decide if your current staff policies can get you there, or if you will be stuck where you are.

Do not hesitate to contact me at

emendlowitz@withum.com

with your practice management questions or about engagements you might not be able to perform.

Edward Mendlowitz, CPA, is partner at WithumSmith+Brown, PC, CPAs. He is on the Accounting Today Top 100 Influential People list. He is the author of 24 books, including “How to Review Tax Returns,” co-written with Andrew D. Mendlowitz, and “Managing Your Tax Season, Third Edition.” He also writes a twice-a-week blog addressing issues that clients have at www.partners-network.com along with the Pay-Less-Tax Man blog for Bottom Line. He is an adjunct professor in the MBA program at Fairleigh Dickinson University teaching end user applications of financial statements. Art of Accounting is a continuing series where he shares autobiographical experiences with tips that he hopes can be adopted by his colleagues. He welcomes practice management questions and can be reached at (732) 743-4582 or emendlowitz@withum.com.

Art of Accounting: 4 reasons staff remain with a firm

Money

Growth

Experience

Flexibility