Comments on the 2006 Ontario Public Accounting Salary Survey

Another year has past and it’s time again to publish our salary survey results.

First, let me explain why we have delayed this until May this year… in previous years we released this in March and, sure, everyone was interested in this but frankly the timing sucked, as everyone was so immersed in busy season.

So we found ourselves inundated in May and June with requests for the survey, when both new candidates and firms looking to hire were really keen to see this data.

That’s why we delayed publishing the survey until May this time around, and we will release the results every May in future.

The results published in this survey should not be taken as ‘cast in stone’. We have many exceptions to our own rules – the occasional senior manager being placed at $150k to $180k, but not reflected in the survey so as not to distort the overall results. I have also seen trainees starting at $30k but again have not included them in the survey because they would again distort the results.

So what does this year’s data tell us compared to previous years?

Well, at first glance, it might appear that salaries have dropped slightly as the lowest salaries quoted this year are a little lower than those in some categories in the previous year. However, this would be incorrect.

The expansion of the range of salaries paid at each level is simply a result of our reach going deeper into the rural areas, where salaries are lower, and deeper within those firms to sometimes more junior positions (and thus lower salary levels) than in previous years.

What we do see quite clearly, though, is that people higher up the totem pole are in greater demand than ever before and salaries have risen quite substantially over 2005.

As a direct result of the intakes of new CAs, CGAs and other designations dropping year on year in public accounting, there are fewer and fewer senior people available as a percentage of total available employees, and as Partners learn to get better leverage off their team members, more senior people have come into higher demand. The combined effect is that the market is driving salaries up at the Manager level and beyond.

I still come across newly qualified CAs in smaller firms making around $50k a year and wonder how their employers get away with it.

Then I think to myself ‘hang on, they haven’t got away with it, that’s one of the reasons why their employee is talking with me right now!’

I also come across very senior people, often salaried partners or their equivalent, who are treated so poorly for so long that they do not really appreciate their worth until they are in front of me or a team member from my firm, and we have an open ‘heart to heart’ about their situation.

Only when they discover the details about some of the very senior opportunities I am working on, and how different the culture is at my clients offices, do they start to see that there really is a way out for them, and sometimes the grass really is greener elsewhere!

But it’s not always purely about the almighty dollar.

Lifestyle issues are becoming increasingly more important with Gen Xers and no doubt this will be amplified, or at least maintained with the new generation coming up behind them, the Yers.

So, work/life balance is becoming a genuine business issue and one that can make all the difference in creating an employee value proposition for candidates.

Another item maintaining its importance is the opportunities to advance within the firm.

The truly ambitious candidates want to see others in the firm who have made it to partnership. Seeing older Partners who were bought out as a succession deal, and haven’t left yet, is not inspiring for new recruits with ambition. Rather, they want to see younger partners involved who were recruited as a new CA, coached and mentored and eventually presented with an opportunity to become a partner.

In my succession-planning book for the CICA, and in my work with public accounting firms nationwide, I always strongly recommend that firms seek to create their own successors from within.

It is by far the least cumbersome, most successful route to creating an exit strategy, and it is also a great recruiting tool if you can genuinely say that your opening could lead to partnership within ‘x’ years.

Enjoy the survey, and if you have any questions, please feel free to call me at 905-257-2284.

MFA Group 2006