Renee Moelders and Jennifer Wilson of ConvergenceCoaching discuss the rising trend of remote work through the lens of the results of their 2022 Anytime, Anywhere Work Survey.
Transcription:
Dan Hood (00:03):
Welcome to On the Air With Accounting Today, I'm editor-in-chief Dan Hood. ConvergenceCoaching has been tracking trends in remote work long before the pandemic gave the phenomenon such a huge boost in 2020 and 2021. Their annual Anytime Anywhere work survey has become an important barometer of where firms are heading on this. And the most recent survey, which came out in mid-January, offers some crucial insights into what remote work may look like as we move out, hopefully of the pandemic here to talk about the survey and about remote work in general or Renee Moelders. Renee, thanks for joining us.
Renee Moelders (00:30):
Hey Dan, thanks for having us here.
Dan Hood (00:32):
And Jennifer Wilson as well, both of ConvergenceCoaching. Jennifer, thanks for joining us.
Renee Moelders (00:35):
Great to be here with you today and I love this subject, so thanks for featuring it.
Dan Hood (00:39):
Yeah, it's a big deal. And only getting bigger. As I mentioned, a large number of firms adopted remote work during the pandemic whether they wanted to or not. Has that stuck? Are firms continuing that move or is it moving it forward? Are they backtracking or are they just holding steady? Renee what's the survey? Tell us.
Renee Moelders (00:56):
Yeah, let's look at the survey data first, Dan, and then we'll talk about anecdotally what are we seeing? And in the survey data, we saw a big jump in anywhere work, so we like to talk about remote and flexible work in terms of where people are working and when people are working. And certainly remote work anywhere work, there was a big jump, so we asked that question about anywhere work. We say do you allow your people to work remotely on a regular or fluid basis without having to ask permission, without having to have a special case assigned to you? And that percentage went from 42% in 2020 to 78% in 2022. Wow. So a really big jump in firms that are allowing for remote work. We also asked a new question this time around about remote recruiting strategy. So we asked firms, do you have a strategy for hiring remote talent?
(01:50)
And that's new, so we don't have the comparative data, but 43% of participants said yes, we have a remote recruiting strategy. So we feel like we're seeing a number of firms really doubled down on remote work. When they hit the pandemic they decided we are going to make this work and we're going to actually have it be strategic for us going forward. So we're seeing lots of signs of that anecdotally. I mean, if you go out and you look at accounting jobs online, many of them are stamped remote where firms are saying, Hey, we'll hire you if you're inner geography or out of our geography. And then we're also seeing things in the survey. Remote work is available to everyone. So it's not just senior leaders, it's not just managers, it's even staff, which that some people are like, Ugh, that's ridiculous. How can we make that work?
(02:45)
But many firms are saying, Hey look, we trust our people and let's have clarity of expectation and clarity about what people are responsible for and we're not going to be that attached to where they're getting the work done. And then admin staff, another category that we pay really close attention to because the admin have in the past not had access to these programs perhaps, or there was some hesitation for that. And lots of firms are saying, yeah, our admin team, they are also able to work remotely and obviously we have to figure out some things with coverage, but not really that much anymore. So just lots of signs that firms are really committed to this. Right. There's also, I mean there's an and or a butt to all of that, which is that that's some firms and there are other firms that are maybe on the fence or just are uncertain about whether than or not they can make this work.
(03:43)
So there's some mixed messages and there is a little bit of pulling back with firms and you hear it, I hear it everywhere. It's not just with my clients. I also hear it at the gym when I'm working out where people are saying, well, I'm going to have to go back to working three days a week in the office. So there are these notions of we're going to have to go back to something, which it's hard for us to picture that because we've hired these people around the country. So you have this kind of contrast or conflict between how are we all going to get back in the office when we don't all live in the same geography.
Dan Hood (04:16):
Well, that all brings up, I mean it brings up a really important or important distinction. Actually there's two or three important distinctions that you brought up that I really sort of glossed over in my introduction. I didn't talk and we'll talk a little bit more about any time work because that flexibility of time I is in many ways just as important as the flexibility of space. But the other thing I want to talk about for now is the important distinction between remote here in our town or wherever we happen to be. And really remote anywhere you can hire people on the moon, if there are people on the moon and they have good enough internet, you can hire them. And that's a huge thing for firms because it's one thing to say, well, we all work around here, we're all from the same county town, whatever the case may be. And when we say people are home, we can still call them in when we need to if really important, you could get into the office, but the opportunity is tremendous in theory to hire people from anywhere. If you're in Florida, you can hire people in Alaska, they might be cheaper. Who knows Jenn, are you seeing anything like that? Are you seeing firms embrace that opportunity to really go beyond just their region, their geography?
Jennifer Wilson (05:20):
Big time? I mean super big time to the point where we named every year we kind of have a theme for our report or every other year when we publish this report, it's in its sixth edition. And this year the theme was borderless reach, boundless opportunity because we really are seeing firms embrace hiring people from anywhere. And it's the big city firms who are reaching into small town America and saying, Hey, you can work for us and we'll pay you what we're paying big city people and we'll free you from maybe your school traditionalist firm and have you work for something more progressive. And that is resonating. We're seeing a lot of issues from that sort of an approach. But there's also, by the way, small town firms hiring from big city firms, from people who are being getting the R T O return to office messaging and the Lincoln Nebraska firm says, Hey, we'll not ask you to R T O and you can work for us and we don't care where you are and you can stop commuting and stop the cost of commuting and those things.
(06:32)
So we're seeing it all over the place. One of the cool things that happened this year in the survey, which was really heartening to us because we're believers in any time anywhere work, we have built our business on it for 22 years and so we know it works. And this year for the very first time we saw a higher percentage of respondents say that they hired somebody they'd never met before in a remote location away from a place where they have an office, they do not have an office there. 81% said that they had done that. Wow. And that was up from 38 in 2020, a massive jump. So that's a leap of faith when you hire a stranger basically that lives way out of town, so not near an office. And that eclipsed the decent high percentage we've been seeing for some time now of people saying, we had somebody in our office who had to relocate to a remote geography and we kept that and in 2020 that was 57%. And in 2022 that jumped to 78 or 79%, something like that. But again, 81% said, Hey, we hired a stranger. And so we definitely see the puck headed to the idea that people are trusting that they can make it work. It's not without challenge and it's not without business model shifting mindset and business model shifting has to happen for it to work.
Dan Hood (08:10):
And we're going to dive into some of that, how the new management challenges that it brings along and how firms need to do to get into that to take make the most of it really to make it work. And as you say that they do need to change for it. I'm curious, I just want to talk briefly about the opportunity that it represents for firms, not just sort of the blanket opportunity. It's an obvious opportunity to hire people from all over the place but there's an opportunity to steal people from other places. You mentioned places that are requiring to go back to work. It was one of our surveys said something like 50% of firms were absolutely willing to hire a remote person that they'd never met before, but that meant 50% were never going to that. They were saying 50%, that's great, but the other 50% are saying no, never. And those 50% in theory right mean are going to lose out on candidates who are insisting on this kind of flexibility.
Renee Moelders (09:01):
And I'm just going to say to you, I think that sort of a mindset that, well, I'm going to call that a closed mindset or a fixed mindset related to this subject is going to dramatically impact the capacity and competitiveness of those organizations. I don't think you can say no, never. And we are in such a tight labor market. We have a shrinking working age population in the United States, 25 to 64 years old. So that's just a demographic problem across all professions and industries. And then of course, we all know the accounting firm and accounting profession issues with graduates pool shrinking and people passing the CPA exam shrinking to say, gosh, I'm closed off to non-traditional talent and capacity and recruiting ideas. If they don't live near me, I don't want 'em. That sounds to me like a formula for a shrinking workforce in those firms.
Dan Hood (10:03):
This is not a time to be putting barriers to <laugh> between you and the workforce or a potential job candidates or labor pool.
Renee Moelders (10:12):
No doubt.
Dan Hood (10:13):
One thing I was fascinated by in this year's report is that it notes an increase in firms offering unlimited pto o. We've seen something a similar trend among our best firms to work for more and more of not all of them, but more and more of them are offering. I think it went up from something like it was below 10% in the previous years. In this year it was just think as many as 15% of the top 100 best firms to work for were offering unlimited pto. And I was wondering why do you think that's happening and do you have a sense of are staff able to actually use it? Are they actually able to take as much time as they want? Renee, are you seeing that why that's happening?
Renee Moelders (10:48):
Yeah, let's start with the why, Dan. And I think for firms that are moving down this path of more flexibility around time, we're getting into any time when we talk about unlimited p t o, if they want to have maximum flexibility and they say, we trust our people to get their work done and we don't really care when they get it done, then the logical next step is, Hey, look, we're just not going to get into this whole management game of when you're taking time off or exactly how much time you're taking off, or did you work more hours earlier in the week and now with, wait a minute, you didn't get in your eight hours today. That whole kind of nickel and dime game that those people have to play, which is very frustrating by the way, for professionals who say, Hey, look, working really hard over here.
(11:35)
Why are we talking about, did I only put in 7.5 hours today and now I have to put in five PTO or something? It just seems dumb. And so those firms that are moving down that path, they're like, well, hey, let's move further. Let's do unlimited PTO. Now. One of the barriers, Dan, is if we don't have clarity of expectation or we don't have good measures, then those firms could get themselves into trouble with enough to pto where then they're asking themselves, are people taking advantage and do we really have the system or the understanding or the relationships with each other to be able to have the right conversations around what's win-win for the individual and the organization? But I mean, you asked the question, are staff taking an advantage of it? And what usually happens in our experience is that people don't take enough time off, so your job becomes more with unlimited P T o that somebody needs to be paying attention to their people to say, are you getting enough time off?
(12:37)
Are you working too hard? And that takes relationships. That's not just HR likely, but that's, I ideally career advisors or career managers that are regularly in touch with their people to say, what are you doing for time off this year? And let's be sure you get that mapped. And then of course, if we're a couple of people, there's likely going to be Hey, let's talk about it feels like you're not meeting your goals and is that related to how much time you're taking off? But you are still going to track it. You're going to know how much people are gone. And so you can make those connections and have to have those feedback conversations. But I think it's more people getting burned out, people not taking enough time off.
Dan Hood (13:18):
This is a profession full of responsible and in some cases, I don't know if you can be overly responsible, be sure you can. I'm ly responsible, so if I can be ly responsible, those people could be overly responsible. It's a profession full of very responsible people who are naturally going to say, well, I've got to get my work done and I've probably got to do more work and I've got to double check it, and if I have time, I'm going to go help somebody else in my firm or answer a client's issue again because of how super responsible they are. And so the likelihood is going to be that they're going to feel maybe in some cases, I think this is a word, uncomfortable taking as much time perhaps as they need or should and can. But it goes to some of the management issues we were talking about before. Managing a remote workforce, a flexible workforce, and a workforce with unlimited PTO means a whole new set of approaches to making sure people know what is expected of them, when it's expected of them, and then being able to track that without just going to the default. Well, they work X numbers of hours of the day, that means they must be doing their work.
(14:18)
We can dive deeply into this but we do need to take a quick break when we'd come back, we'll talk more about this and about the value particularly of remote work to accounting firms and flexible work and why they should be embracing that. Alright, and we're back with Ren Molders and Jennifer Wilson of ConvergenceCoaching, talking about their annual, or sorry, it's not annual, it's biannual survey of work flexibility in terms of time and space because I said it's become sort of a benchmark for the profession. We've been talking about some of the trends that they've specifically noted, but I want to sort of take a step back and say, you've been tracking this for several years. Why is this a priority for firms? Why should firms be embracing this? What's the upside for them? I don't know. Jen, do you want to tackle that? It's a huge question. I realize wildly unfair to dump it all on you, but I know you think a lot about it and they're very passionate about it, so
Jennifer Wilson (15:10):
Yes, for sure. Well, I mean I guess we have to start with just people demand it, people expect it. And one of the reasons we started this survey, I don't know, Renee, you'll have to help me here, but maybe 10 years ago or 12 years ago, 2014. There you go. Okay, thank you. So one of the reasons we started it then was because we saw NextGen talent really wanting it, expecting it, desiring it, and firms resisting it. And we were trying to have firms see that resistance maybe was futile or something, and start pressing them a little bit on some of the issues of the day back in 2014 and end of the issues now in 2022. So to remain competitive to be able to get more than your share of the best and brightest to provide for borderless reach, for talent, and for clients to be able to build a national practice without having to put brick and mortar everywhere to be able to provide your people the ability to integrate their work and their life so that their level of satisfaction and joy and the way that they feel about the business and the opportunities is better because their life fits with their job because they don't feel like they have to sacrifice either on time or place.
(16:40)
Those are all really good reasons. There are lots of surveys out there. Gallup is a good studier of this for sure. Deloitte's done a decent job of studying it as well in terms of workplace productivity. But there's lots of folks that have studied it and they say that that work, a hybrid schedule are more productive. They produce more. And by hybrid it doesn't mean they come into an office. Sometimes it means they do three-dimensional interaction clients or out in the marketplace networking or whatever. So they both do in-person work and they also do remote work that they are more productive, they are more satisfied, they are more engaged. There's all sorts of studies that just bear that out. And so there's lots of benefits to getting good at this. But I would say the number one is if you want to sustain your firm into the future NextGen talent, want and expect this, and you won't have any if you don't offer it.
Dan Hood (17:35):
Well sure, having a future for your firm sounds great, but if I'm an accounting firm manager of any level this is going to require an awful lot of work on my part. It sounds troubling. We talked about the need to shift management approaches to handle a remote workforce. Maybe we could talk a little bit more about that what firms need to do. You can't do the management by walking around. You can't just look out of your office and go, yeah, they're all in their seats. They must be working. Renee, do you have any thoughts on how firms should change their management styles to manage a new remote or hybrid workforce?
Renee Moelders (18:09):
Sure. Well, we can start with managing by work, walking around, because you can walk around with the remote workforce, you do it in a different way with intentionality that you get on teams and you see who's green or get out there and ping people and say, how's it going? Checking yen with you. And so there's all these ways to be in touch with your people no matter where they are. And that's a really important part of it is with intentionality, we have to be managing our people. And I don't know Dan and the old paradigm that we were doing such a great job, but that if you look out and everyone's sitting at their desk, they're all busy. Some number of them might be planning their vacation or playing video games. I don't know. You can't really tell what people are doing unless you look over their shoulder maybe.
(18:54)
And so we probably weren't doing such a great job with it before. <laugh>. We're definitely going to have to trust our people. I mean, that's a huge part. And when they aren't in front of us, that is hard for people. That's one of the big things. It's holes at them that they say, well, they're not here, and then I can't hear from them. And then I immediately start to think they're doing their laundry or they're goofing off or they're not working and we have to quit all that and instead trust our people that we're going to set up clear expectations and we're going to have clear measures of success. And then in the end, I don't really care where when you did the work, did you push out what you needed to push it out of the pipe at the end of the week. That's what really matters.
(19:39)
And so trusting, practicing that trust, talking to each other about are we being trusting with our people? That I think that's huge and the leadership struggles with that and having really consistent messages with each other and consistent messages with the team about, Hey, we believe in revolt work. We believe in flexible work. We have firms who are saying that in theory, and then in practice, those individual leaders are struggling with it. And so we're going to have to work on that too. Getting consistent leadership messages being on the same page. You can't go, Dan, if you're a member of the team, kind of go off on your own and say, well, on my jobs I, I've heard about this remote work thing we're doing here, but on my jobs, it's not really going to work so we're going to have to be consistent. I think that's pretty huge.
Dan Hood (20:28):
It only takes, oh, sorry guys.
Renee Moelders (20:30):
Well there is just one more aspect of letting go of some things. We've been touching on that throughout, and we have these things that we say about things. We have to be a person to be able to do, train, collaborate really learn from each and share with each other. There's this idea and people are saying it right now, well, it's easier or it's better if we're in person and we have to quit that it being hung up on all of that 3D stuff. Because in convergence Scotian, we've been doing this for 22 years. Our clients have been doing it for many years as well. You don't have to all be together, and by the way, you can't. And so quit pining for some sort of thing we had in the past and let's just move on and create new models for it.
Dan Hood (21:16):
And also be clear that for a lot of the people who worked for you they probably didn't enjoy being in person with you as much as you think they did and probably didn't learn as much or as well as you think they did. So yeah, it's worth getting past it. It's interesting, you know, made me think when you're talking about I can't see them while they're working also and I do it all the time. I'm doing it during this interview. We think more about the presence, the physical presence than we do about the time. Because the fact that I'm sitting in my office going, I don't know if my workers are working right now because they're at home. They may not be working right now, but they may be working when you are at home. The flexibility of time is not just place, it's flexibility of time that needs to be built into that understanding of I can't see them, but I know they're working. Or they may not be working right now. They may work late at night or once they put the kids to bed or they prefer to work on the weekends or anything like that. So bearing that in mind is going to be, I think probably another hurdle for management.
Renee Moelders (22:10):
And Dan, that's kind of interesting because that's another component of this new management style is that we need to be in touch with each other and building relationships and how do I know when you like to work? If we never talk about it, if we have this kind of static relationship where I'm just like, here's my work and you give it back to me, but I've never really explored with you what's your favorite place and time to work and how are you pulling this all together? This is a tough job. And then I share a little bit with you what works for me and we are getting to know each other. And then through that is compassion and understanding that I'm working at 8:00 AM and I'm irritated. No one else is here. Well, I mean they're working at 10:00 PM and I'm sleeping. So we start to get a better understanding of their different styles. There's diversity of approach and all of that is as long as each of us is meeting our commandments
Dan Hood (23:04):
And bearing it in mind, being constantly aware, just because I'm working doesn't mean they're working. Just long as they get their work done by the time we agreed it should be done, then that's the way it should work. Yeah, it's fascinating, but it does require a fair amount of change and particularly in mindsets for a lot of people. Jen I was wondering if you have any thoughts on, we've talked about how managers need to change their thinking and their processes, their approach. Any specific tips on managing remote workers? Because we know they're all at home watching tv. Come on, you and I, but we all know this. How do we keep 'em in line? How do we get the most out of them?
Jennifer Wilson (23:37):
They are not all watching tv. Hi. I mean, maybe it's some tv. They are, by the way, the idea of TV is old school. Incidentally, they're watching their phones. If they're watching something and they're streaming, it's called streaming. So nobody says watching tv. That's like under 24 or something. That's extreme gist of you, but go ahead. No, I'm sorry. <laugh>. Boy, I had to say it. Yeah, I mean I love where you just went with you to Asynchronicity. Okay, so we used to have synchronous work eight to five or whatever. We all muddy through Friday. And then during busy season asynchronous, our synchronicity meant staying through dinner and it meant coming on Saturdays or whatever. And that did not work for some percentage of the population and especially those with young children and especially those that might be in the primary care caregiver role as a working parent.
(24:28)
And so it had a lot of people bleed out of this profession because if you weren't able to sync your schedule up and make your life work with that, then you were not a keeper. Today that's not the case. We have to have real clear measures of success, production output, deliverables, results, what does that look like? Not what hours did you work or physically where did you work them, but what did you produce? What results did you deliver? What difference did you make for others? How did you contribute to the organization? We have to define those things and we have to be clear with people about what they feel like they can deliver and what the organization needs them to deliver for them to be successful. I don't care if they're doing laundry and frankly, I don't care if they're doing laundry on the phone with me as long as they're not supposed to be on video or something during it.
(25:18)
And as long as we still can have a productive work conversation, who cares? So we have to let go of that. And I think Renee was talking about this mindset shift for managers. Part of it is clarifying in writing. Well, let's expected, we think every organization should have how WeWork document kind of a cultural manifesto around anytime, anywhere work. It should be in writing, it should be flexible. We should update it every year at least we should have a committee that inputs to it. The committee should include people that are completely remote. If you have completely remote people because they have to share their story and their perspective. It has to specify things like what is our expectation for responsiveness and what is our expectation for availability or accessibility? It's called, when can I access you? How can I access you? What tools should I use?
(26:10)
Some people have a thing like she's working from home, I shouldn't bother her. Well, wait a minute, if you're working, then you're not bothered by me accessing you. So we have to publish accessibility. My every one of us has to publish our accessibility daily. How do you access me and when can you access me? And then during accessibility hours, I should be responsive in a certain way, whether it's one hour response time to teams message or 24 response to email or whatever we should put in writing what that response time expectation is. And then like Renee said, regular huddle huddles and check-ins with people one-on-one to say, what's going on in your life? How's it all working? How do you need to flex up or down? And that requires some shepherding. And we may not have a lot of skills in shepherding and we certainly are growing our skills, but don't not expert yet in managing this kind of mixed and hybrid paradigm.
(27:06)
So we need a lot of learning and development, our learning and development and talent investments for managers and for the talent themselves on how to be successful. That's another thing. I mean, we do a fair amount of teaching out to the people that are doing hybrid work. How can they be successful? Because they need to own that too. And it's not just how they manage their work relationship and how they communicate and make sure they're meeting expectations. They take responsibility for that. The boss man is not looking for them. They're reporting their progress, but also how could they win in this hybrid environment where it's not all the time everywhere work. How can they create boundaries and transitions and stop working and make sure that it's meeting their mental and physical and spiritual health needs. So education around all of that is required and I think that should just be something every firm should be investing in and planning on and perfecting as part of orientation and as part of ongoing c p E.
Dan Hood (28:11):
Well, it's interest you that clear expectations, but also one of the things about this while will require extra work for manage and so on, it also requires extra work from staff, right? Because you have to manage yourself more than you did. There was things about sitting in an office knowing your boss could see you that managed you in a way that you don't get managed when you're sitting at home and no one can see you and they don't know if you're doing laundry or again watching streaming something on your phone. There you go. Trying to keep up, trying to catch up with the kids. So it does require sort of more intentionality on everyone's parts, not just management. So if that's any consolation to managers who are feeling burdened by this I know that it's also a burden for staff who ordinarily might have relied on just the environment of the office to keep them, commute them in track.
(28:55)
I do want to have a quick question for you. You talked about publishing accessibility and making sure people know when you're available and then having standards around response times. There seems to be a little bit of a trend in some companies to say, well, we're going to have certain hours where everyone's available. In some cases they're literally making it. You have to come into the office on Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays or something like that. But in other cases they're just saying, listen, for these core hours for a couple of days a week, everyone needs to be on. Do you see value in that or is making sure that everyone knows when and how your B accessible is enough?
Jennifer Wilson (29:29):
So against core hours, there you go, right? I'll boo for core hours. And part of that is just, it's a synchronicity idea. So I'm expecting my people's schedules to be synchronous at some point, even if it's just four hours. What ends up happening is you have so many people who need late start due to kids and their transitions in the morning and people that, or horrible commutes or whatever. And then you have people that need early leave or start early, leave early because of late afternoon commitments. What ends up happening is if you lop off early mornings and late afternoons, you end up with core hours of 10 to two or something that's during the lunch hour. So then now if I'm going to schedule meetings during that, I'm making people miss lunch or bring their lunch or I have to supply lunch. And the minute I go to a multi-time zone environment and not just employee multi-time zone, but offshore, hello offshore.
(30:35)
The second I go offshore, I lose synchronicity period. And core hours start to get really goofy, super goofy, like 10 to two eastern. So now my Pacific guys have to be available core hours, eight to no or seven, what am I doing there? So it doesn't work. Core hours don't work in it. For fact, I don't know if it was this year or the prior year, but we quit asking questions about core hours in our survey because they just don't work and they're trying to hold on to the last little thread of something old and traditional. And so we're just pretty much against,
Renee Moelders (31:17):
Well in Jen, there might be for certain teams times when they want to be together, either we would like to be together in person and so we're going to fly our remote people in and we're going to all work at the same time so that we can do something special. Or it might be that like we're going to have some kind of meeting every Friday and we're going to look for a time that works best for as many people as we can. But to try to do that across the whole firm, Dan, it just doesn't make sense. And then when it doesn't make sense, people start to get frustrated. It's like it's dumb. That's what they say. It's like these rules are dumb. They don't make sense. And why would you want to create rules that make your people feel that way and not feel trusted to make the right decisions for the business and the clients and the team trust them to make those decisions.
Dan Hood (32:07):
Fair enough. Fair enough. There you go. Jen, you brought up I was just mentioning you talking about time for particularly in the morning when kids need to be got out of school and we haven't had a chance to talk about the need for children to take more responsibilities for themselves and for their flexibility of work and all that sort stuff. That'll be our next podcast to want to dive deeply into why aren't they managing themselves better? Why do they take so much time from their management teams? Children, I think are given that we want to hire more and more of them in the profession. I think that's going to be a problem for us. But for now we've run out of time. I'm afraid our, can people find more about the survey? I said it's come out in mid mid-January. Can they find more information about it on your website,
Renee Moelders (32:49):
No, that's the right spot, Dan. They should go to
Dan Hood (33:03):
Excellent. It's full of great stuff. Highly recommend taking a look at it because it really is where the profession is going. It is where firms that are going to be able to hold on to staff, recruit and retain the best kind of people and keep 'em happy and engaged, and again, get their work done in a much better, more efficient way. They're all heading in that direction. Need to pick up on a lot of the things you've both been talking about it. Jennifer Wilson and Renee Moelders of ConvergenceCoaching. Thank you both so much.
Renee Moelders (33:25):
Thank you, Dan.
Jennifer Wilson (33:26):
Yeah, thank you so much, Dan. Thanks for covering this. It's so important and I hope firms will take something from the survey and make a new shift or a big leap forward.
Dan Hood (33:37):
Let's hope. Let's hope... and to find more about it, again, at convergencecoaching.com. And thank you all for listening. This episode of On the Air was produced by Accounting Today with audio production by Kellie Malone. Rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform and see the rest of our content on accountingtoday.com. Thanks again to our guests and thank you for listening.