Something hasn't been happening lately that has left economists baffled: The major investments made over the past decade in cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and other technology advancements don't seem to be showing up in productivity figures. In other words, all that IT doesn't seem to be helping us produce more, or to produce it faster or better.
This is unlike the IT investments of the mid-to-late 1990s, which apparently did make us all more productive, and in measurable ways. I know for a fact that I was more productive at the end of the 1990s than I was at the beginning of the 1990s — but then, I would also say that I am more productive now than I was in 2010, and I would ascribe a lot of that to cloud technology. I am not an economist, however, so it is likely that I am simply missing a key factor that would show that I am not, in fact, doing more work now than I was then, and I am afraid my employer might find out, so let's move on to a productivity question that is thematically similar, but less threatening to my prospects for continued employment.
And that would be the fact that no one seems to know whether accountants became more productive while working remotely during COVID, or less productive. I've seen studies that argue both, and the many times we have asked firm leaders themselves, the responses are all over the map, mostly falling around two poles: "Our employees became highly engaged mobile superstars during the pandemic" or "Our staff went home in March 2020 and haven't done a lick of work since, so we're requiring them to come back into the office."
That second pole is more common among accounting firms, and it represents a serious problem, as flexibility in where and when they work is a deal-breaker for many job candidates. And the fact is that, at least according to anecdotal reports from the smaller cohort of firms with lots of mobile superstars, it is perfectly possible for accountants to be highly productive while working remotely. The clear implication (at least to me, though I'm the first to admit that I am no expert in productivity, and certainly no economist) is that any productivity issues that firms are experiencing are the result of something they're doing wrong.
A simple refusal to adopt the new management techniques required by a remote workforce seems like a strong possibility, as does a failure to establish clear expectations or set up appropriate workflows for remote teams.
If the necessary productivity isn't showing up among remote accountants, you don't have to be an economist to realize that that's more likely to be a management than a personnel issue — but then again, I'm not an economist, so I couldn't say for sure.
