retention

SURVEY RESULTS: Effective Stay Interviews for CPA Firms

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Two businessmen talking over coffeeWant to boost retention? This is how.

How some firms are beating the staffing crisis:
Join the survey. Get the results.

By Kristen Rampe
Talent Retention & Development

In a survey we conducted of over 300 CPAs, over one-third of respondents indicated that healthy effective communication at their accounting firm only happened “sometimes” or “rarely or never.”

MORE FROM THE SURVEY: The 16 Biggest #FAILs in Delegation | Work-Life Balance: According to Whom? | NEW SURVEY RESULTS: Two Ways Your Strategic Plan Can Reduce Turnover
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With many facets to overall communication between team members and from leadership to the organization, it’s hard to pick the next thing to try and improve the status of communication at your firm. One to try if you haven’t? The stay interview.
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When to Offer Profit Sharing

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Owner wants to offer a percentage to a staff person, but how?

By Ed Mendlowitz
The CPA Trendlines Practice Doctor

QUESTION: I have a small practice and have a staff person with me eight years (who had nine years of experience before coming to me) and I want to offer him some profit-sharing percentage.

MORE PRACTICE DOCTOR Q&A: How CPAs Provide a Reference | The 44-Point Staff Performance Evaluation Checklist | How to Choose the Right CPE | Do You Want to Keep This Employee? | How to Know Everything | The Six Rules To Get the Most Out of CPE | Everyone Needs Strategic Planning | 19 Ways to Stop Wasting Reviewer Time
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How do I approach it?
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How Can We Keep New Staff Longer?

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four young happy office employeesRegardless of your hire, there will be training involved.

By Ed Mendlowitz
The CPA Trendlines Practice Doctor

QUESTION: I know you advocate hiring out of school, but that seems to present a danger when they leave after we have invested so much training them. What can be done to retain them longer, if that is possible?

MORE PRACTICE DOCTOR Q&A: How CPAs Provide a Reference | What’s In a Title? | Managing Partners Should Drop their Book of Business | What’s Lousy, the Client or Your Approach? | Not the MP, Still a ‘Managing’ Partner | Checklist for Running a Practice | Hate Meeting People? Try Improv (No Joke) | Help Clients, Increase Revenue: Make Sure Everyone on Staff Knows Your Firm’s Full Menu of Services | How to Sell Your Practice | When a Client Balks at Necessary Work
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

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Do You Want to Keep This Employee?

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How to decide whether employees deserve raises… or jobs.

By Ed Mendlowitz
The CPA Trendlines Practice Doctor

QUESTION: I have a longtime employee who asked me for a 33 percent salary increase, or she said she would have to explore options. How do you suggest I handle this?

MORE PRACTICE DOCTOR Q&A: Not the MP, Still a ‘Managing’ Partner | 34 Ways to Make More Money | Why This Help Wanted Ad Is All Wrong | Why Credentials Are Worthwhile | I Made Partner, Now What?

Additional information: She works five hour days every day and is paid by the hour. She gives me no added time during tax season. She also gets paid for an extra six days – which is for half of the firm’s allowed holidays – and for eight days for combined sick, vacation and personal days, and I pay her for half of her required CPE time (payment for 20 hours) and all the registration costs.

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Henry & Horne Offers Flex Time, Loans to Future CPAs

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Goodmiller and Inderieden
Managing partners Goodmiller and Inderieden

Monthly videos help communicate management plans.

Henry and Horne CPA logo

By CPA Trendlines Staff

For Henry & Horne, keeping up with technology and finding and retaining good workers are primary concerns. While the Phoenix-area CPA firm can only wait and watch while others develop new technologies for accountants and their clients, it’s proactively confronting its personnel concerns.

MORE from THE CORNER OFFICE: Lee Beall: Finding Next-Gen Leaders at Rea & Assoc. | Joe Kask Leads ‘Paradigm Shift’ at BlumShapiro | CEO Charles Weinstein: EisnerAmper Targets Work-Life Balance | HBK’s Allegretti Says Firm Must Stress Excitement Factor | Lou Grassi Focuses on Recruiting, Retention at Namesake N.Y. Firm | Richard Berkowitz Drives Berkowitz Pollack Brant to ‘Warp Speed’ | Randy Myeroff at Cohen & Co.: Winning the Youth Movement | Rick Dreher Innovates Wipfli for Clients, Younger Workers | How Blain Heckaman Drives Value at Kaufman Rossin | WeiserMazars MP Blake Charts U.S. Expansion | Frank Longobardi: CohnReznick’s Battle for Top Talent | The Robo-CPA: Jim Sikich Prepares for Disruptive Technologies |  Exclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

“For many CPA firms, recruitment, retention, and succession is the critical issue, but progressive, forward-thinking firms should see this as a true opportunity,” says Chuck Goodmiller, co-managing partner with Chuck Inderieden.
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Chris Allegretti Makes Retention a Top Priority at HBK

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Allegretti
Allegretti

Also: Expanding on the notion of ‘most trusted advisor.’

By CPA Trendlines Staff

While hiring top talent is a key concern for Chris Allegretti, chief executive officer of HBK CPAs & Consultants in Canfield, Ohio, he’s even more concerned with his firm’s ability to retain its best people.

HBKlogoMORE from THE CORNER OFFICE: Lou Grassi Focuses on Recruiting, Retention at Namesake N.Y. Firm | Richard Berkowitz Drives Berkowitz Pollack Brant to ‘Warp Speed’ | Randy Myeroff at Cohen & Co.: Winning the Youth Movement | Rick Dreher Innovates Wipfli for Clients, Younger Workers | How Blain Heckaman Drives Value at Kaufman Rossin | WeiserMazars MP Blake Charts U.S. Expansion | Frank Longobardi: CohnReznick’s Battle for Top Talent | The Robo-CPA: Jim Sikich Prepares for Disruptive Technologies |  Exclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

“Of  course our job is to recruit the best, but we ‘re also finding that we have to constantly ‘re-recruit’ them by investing in their futures and making our firm the place where they’ll want to stay,” he says.
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Don’t Weed Out the Roses

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Gardener pruning a rose bushWhen tweaking your comp system, remember it’s not just about the money.

By August Aquila
Creating the Effective Partnership

If your partners are putting up a fight to keep clients who should be let go, take a look at your compensation system. It’s not just about billable hours.

MORE ON LEADERSHIP FOR PRO Members: 8 Questions to Analyze Your Pricing | What Makes a Successful Strategic Plan? | Innovate or Die | Partners Love, Hate Leadership | 8 Ways Leaders Destroy Firms | Today’s Top Six Partner Compensation Trends | 8 Financial Ducks to Line Up Now

Here are 16 tweaks to your firm’s compensation system. While the list is not exhaustive, it does provide criteria that firms can consider beyond revenue.
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Top 100 Firms Report Solid Growth Amidst Staffing Challenges

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Top 100 overall revenue chart
Source: AccountingToday

Attest, M&A and SALT lead top trending niches.

Accounting Today’s annual listing of its Top 100 firms reflects what the industry as a whole is seeing: Business is good and it’s getting better.

Overall growth was a healthy 8.44 percent, similar to but slightly higher than recent years.

Firms with revenues between $100 million and $1 billion outpaced the others in growth mode, although mergers had a great deal to do with that.

The most difficult challenge cited was – no surprise – recruiting and retaining qualified staff, especially those with three to five years of experience. Pressure is being put on the talent pool by retiring Baby Boomers only exacerbates the problem. Tools to counter it include: READ MORE →