STAFFING & RECRUITING

What Relevance Means for Staffing in Accounting

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Five young business people at work in an office setting.

Seventeen ways to improve.

By Marc Rosenberg
CPA Firm Staff: Managing Your #1 Asset

The business graveyard is littered with major organizations that missed the boat by failing to see cataclysmic game changers happening right before their eyes.

  • Ice companies failed to get into refrigeration because they saw themselves in the ice business.
  • Railroads missed out on autos and aerospace because they didn’t see themselves in the transportation business.
  • A CEO of Digital Equipment Corporation said he couldn’t imagine why people would want a computer in their own house.
  • It took the Wright Brothers five years to get the U.S. government to even talk to them about their invention.

MORE: How Accounting Staffing Has Changed
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In all fairness it’s extremely difficult, if not impossible, to anticipate and accept massive changes like these.
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How Accounting Staffing Has Changed

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Businesswoman sitting on table while talking with four coworkers

And two major drivers of that change.

By Marc Rosenberg
CPA Firm Staff: Managing Your #1 Asset

“Treat people as they are and they will remain as they are. Treat people as they can be and should be and they will become as they can and should be.” – Goethe

“You see, really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up, such as dressing and the proper way of speaking and so on, the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl. But I know I can be a lady to you, Colonel Pickering, because you always treat me as a lady and always will.” – Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady”

MORE: Thirteen Traits of Partners You’ll Want to Keep | Six Rules for Keeping Partners Happy and Productive | Why Strategic Thinking Impacts Your Firm’s Future | Seven Things Good Firms Must Do | Five Ways to Separate Accounting Winners from Losers | Two Factors Determine Firm Profitability | Don’t Make Firm Profitability a Goal | Core Values: Why Your Firm Needs Them | Five Keys in Compensating New Managing Partners | Top 20 Tough Choices for the Partner Comp Committee | Voting on Ownership Basis? Three Better Methods | What Partners Do and Don’t Deserve
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The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus said: “There is nothing permanent except change.” People fly and drive cars instead of using horses and carts. Technology has replaced calculators, slide rules and the process for writing books. Food is purchased at grocery stores instead of grown on farms.

Drastic changes have occurred in the CPA industry as well. One of the biggest areas of change is how staff are managed and treated, as shown by this chart.
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Doug Slaybaugh: How to Define “Values in Motion” | The Disruptors

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Are your firm’s stated values consistent with its behavior?

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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines

How does your firm define culture? Is your culture consistent with the values posted on the breakroom wall? Doug Slaybaugh, founder of CPA Coach, defines culture as “values in motion.” According to this definition, a firm’s stated values must be evident in the ways a firm actually behaves.

MORE DISRUPTORS: Candy Bellau: The $350 Pricing Mistake that Nearly Broke this Boutique Firm | The Disruptors | Poe: What P.E. Really Wants from Firms | The Disruptors  | Blake Oliver: Build a Biz that Runs Without You | Daiber: Use Succession as a Growth Strategy | Cannon: Busy Season is Self-Inflicted | Carroll: When One Person Can Break the Firm | Rampe: Build a Roadmap Even When the Road’s Not There | Chang: Killing SALY, One Agent at a Time |

MORE CPA Trendlines Streaming Network

A firm with the value of philanthropy, for example, should give team members the ability to volunteer or sponsor nonprofit events. “There should be evidence,” Slaybaugh explains. “Otherwise, there’s no evidence of that value. It’s really not your culture.”

Slaybaugh’s previous firm had the often-clichéd value of “people first,” but actually executed on that. Team members were offered the option to buy an additional month of PTO, prorated from their salaries, resulting in an 11-month year with nearly two months of vacation.

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Accounting Enrollment Surges as Profession Rebuilds Its Talent Pipeline

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chart
Trends in the number of college accounting majors compared to salaries in the industry. Enrollments are up 5.7 percent so far this year and so is pay. (CPA Trendlines Research)

 

56,000 new accounting majors since 2023.

By CPA Trendlines Research

Accounting programs at U.S. colleges and universities are seeing a resurgence after years of decline, providing fresh evidence that the profession’s talent shortage may be easing.

MORE The Fastest-Growing Jobs in Accounting Are Not Accounting Jobs | Crowdsourced Salary Data Sparks Accounting Change | Retention Isn’t About Perks or Paychecks Anymore | Why CPAs Quit Public Accounting | Students Who Get Ahead Don’t Wait for Graduation | The Staffing Problem Nobody Talks About | New CPA Licensure Pathway Opens Doors to Talent |  | Gen Z Surges into Accounting for All the Reasons Your Mother Told You

MORE in Pay & Comp | Staffing & Recruiting

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New data from the National Student Clearinghouse and the AICPA show that accounting is now outperforming most other business disciplines in attracting undergraduate students.
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Give Your Leaders Time to Lead

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people gathering in the shape of an arrowPut the right people in the right seats. You might have to create some seats.

By Jody Grunden
Building the Virtual CFO Firm in the Cloud

As our team was growing and we reached over 30 team members, we recognized the need to establish a formal leadership team. When we were smaller, it worked fine for Adam and me to be the primary decision makers, but as our client base and workload grew, we realized we would become a bottleneck and slow things down.

MORE by Jody Grunden
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At that point, we made a conscious effort to transition our daily tasks and client responsibilities to other team members so we could remove ourselves from the weeds and focus on the higher-level view of the company.
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