Dustin Hostetler: The Coming Storm

Dustin Hostetler, a Lean Six Sigma consultant in heavy demand these days by CPA firms overhauling their workflows, foresees a “coming storm” in staff turnover. In short, he says, CPA firm employees are simply fed up with old, inefficient and ineffective ways of working.

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Firms at Strategy Session Find Their ‘Rock Stars’

Top talent strategy session
CPA firm decision-makers hammer out the best clues to identify partner-potential professionals and how best to recruit, develop and retain them at a strategy session in Milwaukee.

Hint: It’s not about how smart they are or hard they work.

By Rick Telberg

How do you spot the hidden rock stars on your staff?

And what do up-and-coming tax, accounting and finance professionals need to know to get ahead in today’s profession?

Rick Telberg leading the strategy session
Rick Telberg leading the strategy session

These aren’t idle questions. Many firms and individuals are struggling with these issues right now. But don’t take it from me. Just listen to the decision-makers from a dozen firms I met with in a Milwaukee hotel recently. The mission: Learn how to deal with a looming new staff shortage. Some took away solid action plans. “Our firm,” said one, “is trying to develop our rock stars and this showed me we need to be doing more.” Another said, “Excellent! It gave us the details and the ‘how-to.’”

Green Team's top talent indicators notes
Green Team's top talent indicators notes

Interestingly, the Milwaukee group’s conclusions and recommendations closely parallel our related research findings. So we can be fairly certain that we’ve obtained some of the profession’s favorite strategies.

You could probably adapt one of our methods for your firm. In Milwaukee, we divided the group into two teams, the Green Team and the Blue Team. After some preliminary coaching, each team hammered out a list of the top five talent indicators – the clues in an employee’s behaviors and attitudes that demonstrate the highest likelihood of the best ROI for a firm’s time, energy, and money in training, coaching and mentoring. Then the group filled several flip chart pages with their lists and hashed them out with each other. After identifying the key indicators, we moved on to identifying the best strategies for recruiting, grooming and retaining top talent.

Blue Team's top talent indicators notes
Blue Team's top talent indicators notes

By far, the top predictive indicator across all firms is the trait, “They are always trying to improve.” It comes in a few flavors or variations. For instance, the Green Team at the Milwaukee strategy meeting favored a passion for “continuous learning.” The Blue Team preferred, “They do ‘extra credit’ – things that the partners wouldn’t normally expect from someone at their level.” But they add up to the same thing.

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The Partner Compensation Checklist

It’s a process.

by Gary L. Adamson
Adamson Advisory

There is a constant topic of conversation both inside firms and at almost every conference. It is the age-old question of partner compensation and “how do you do it”. As our firm grew, we evolved from everyone is equal, to the “slip of paper” approach, to a more goal driven, performance based system. Every firm is a little bit different but the issues surrounding how you split the pie are pretty consistent.

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Average Accounting Wage Hits $27.10 Per Hour

2011 finishes at new high. Average hourly earnings across all employees in the accounting and bookkeeping slipped slightly in the latest month, but rang in a solid gain year to year. With more than 970,000 workers, the Bureau of Labor … Continued

CPA Firm Headcounts Show a Rebound

20 years of ups and downs, now up again. The number of people employed by CPA firms in the U.S. has topped 400,000 for the first time since last February, according to the latest data available to CPA Trendlines. Total … Continued