Art of Accounting: How to move staff up

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Staff need to develop and grow if firms are going to develop and grow. Many owners and partners take a short view and don’t do the necessary things to retain and develop staff. Many staff members also do not push their development and just go with the flow. The problem is the flow ends up with stagnation, dissatisfaction and the staff person leaving or being let go.

There are many reasons for lack of development, but this can somewhat be alleviated if just one party works at it. If both parties do, much more success is assured. Here are some reasons that hold back growth and how to thwart them.

• A staff person does a great job with a large but difficult client and gets along very well with the client, so they are “permanently” assigned to that client. When this occurs the growth for that staff person ends. A suggestion is to assign a lower-level staff person the third year and have the person already working on that client supervise them, remain in contact with the client, and also step up to assume more of the partner’s role. This way both staff members grow, the partner grows and this high performing staff person is being leveraged.
• A speedy and adroit staff person is given a lot of small jobs or small clients since the work gets turned around quickly and without needing much review. However, the entire book of business might not be that high in relation to the salary being paid, or the volume needed to have that staff person be profitable. A pattern of comfort settles in and the situation works well for the clients and partners. For the staff person there is a lot of satisfaction with getting a large volume of work done and out the door. The problem here is no growth. Unlike the prior situation, these clients are too small to have an extra layer on this client. What I suggest here is in the third year a younger staffer starts working on this client, with review by the regular staff person, and after one year, the regular staff person drops off the account. After another year working alone on that client, the process is repeated with a younger staff person on that account. 
• Many senior-level tax people prefer to do their own tax research and occasionally this can be very time consuming. A suggestion is to have an assistant or young tax preparer do some preliminary research to be presented to the senior person (for example, with links to articles, code sections, regulations, revenue rulings, procedures and Tax Court memorandums or decisions). They can also be asked to skim the material, looking to identify one of the specific issues. They could cut and paste excerpts of what they have found into a Word file as a guide to the supervisor. If they think it can be helpful, they could also write a short paragraph about what they found, referencing the material. I suggest a time budget for this. It can start with simpler issues as a way to introduce them to tax research. With patience, this can elevate the staff person and relieve the more senior person from work that can be passed over to others.
• Some tax reviewers get blogged down or overloaded with returns. One way to reduce the reviewer’s time is to have content verification and checking done by another preparer, i.e., a peer preparer on the same level as the preparer. The reviewer should then only have to spot-check a couple of large items. Many firms have opted out of the content review stage but, if you haven’t, it is very time consuming and wearying for the reviewer. It also creates reviewer fatigue, which isn’t good for maintaining quality or a long-term strategy. Reviewers are hard to find or train and need a large depth of knowledge. A problem develops if they aren’t allowed to grow into other roles. Exactly what those roles are is a separate discussion, but reviewer growth needs to be put on the radar. Without growth, what does their future look like?
• Much of the work can not only be done by lower-level staff people, but also by paraprofessionals. This is a way to push work down and elevate the staff people into more of a supervisor role and free up time to take over work the owner or partners would be doing.

There are many other illustrations, but these should make my point that staffers need to be moved up for them and the firm to grow. It takes effort, but it can create worthwhile results.
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.