Wherever You Are, The Song Remains The Same!

The global village truly is upon us.

Lately my travel schedule has been pretty heavy; it looks a little like this:

• A day in Guelph to do a day’s teaching on marketing the a mid sized firm’s entire staff
• A trip to Oshawa to attend a Partner meeting to assess their priorities in working with them
• A morning in Downtown Toronto to introduce a six partner firm to a potential merger partner
• A trip to St John, Newfoundland, to do a keynote speech for a national group of accounting firms
• A trip to Calgary to speak all day on best practices for accounting firms
• A trip to London, UK, to meet with several accounting firms to address the succession planning challenges that they face over the coming years
• A breakfast seminar for CCH and Scotiabank to accounting firms
• A trip to Regina to hold a one day PD course for the Institute of Chartred Accountants of Nova Scotia

Wherever I go, the key issues always seem to be the same:

• Finding good staff
• Keep hold of them
• Growing new partners from the talent pool
• Looking for growth opportunities through merger or acquisition

So, if the above challenges are the same as the ones you’re facing these days, you can take some comfort from knowing that it ain’t just you! Everyone in public accounting is facing the same issues.

What is it about the public accounting profession that makes it so difficult, even for professional recruiting firms, to find good people?

It’s not that we’re producing dumber people, in fact we’re not producing enough people.
So, we might turn to immigration, you think, but wait, most designations from the countries where we attract most immigrants from are not recognized in Canada.

Of course, there’s also the backlash of Enron Tyco et al – tarnishing the profession’s previously immaculate public image. Never before were professional accountants thought of as crooks!

A quick joke: ‘What do you call a creative accountant?….. The Accused!’ That’s the type of uphill struggle we face today.

It’s a collection of circumstances:

• The profession is not held is such high regard today by students
• We find new competition, especially in Calgary and Edmonton, from the Oil & Gas industry for talent.
• There are fewer people in the Gen ‘X’ and Gen ‘Y’ talent pool from where we will pull tomorrow’s practitioners
• Immigrants’ professional qualifications are not deemed to be of equal value to our own

As today’s ‘baby-boomer’ accountant slowly marches toward retirement, we have a problem facing all firms, but especially sole practitioners and smaller partnerships – who is going to by me out?

Remember my schedule from the start of this article? Here’s the topics boiled down to their core, clarified in parenthesis for the speed reader:

• A day in Guelph - teaching marketing to staff to develop new partners (Recruiting & Succession)
• A trip to Oshawa to attend a Partner meeting (Recruiting & Succession)
• A morning in Downtown Toronto (Recruiting & Succession)
• A trip to St John, Newfoundland (Recruiting & Succession)
• A trip to Calgary (Recruiting & Succession)
• A trip to London, UK (Recruiting & Succession)
• A breakfast seminar (Recruiting & Succession)
• A trip to Regina (Recruiting & Succession)

Yes, finding, keeping, developing (and selling out to) good people is the number one problem we face around the world.

Fortunately there are some things we can do (and that I teach my clients and speak about in my seminars) to address the problems.

There’s no quick fix, though, don’t misunderstand.

However, firms who face up to the challenges and prepare themselves to address them will no doubt be the ones who flourish and thrive in the years ahead.

In order to stand a fighting chance, we need to address the following areas:

• Making the firm a ‘fun’ place to work for all
• Creating a sense of ownership among the staff (I call it ‘The Nordstrom Effect’)
• Leading by example – taking time off, and having a life so staff aspire to be like you!
• Firing bad clients who are just emotional vampires – they suck the will to live right out of us!
• Looking for ways to work with our better clients that truly adds value to the relationship
• Getting to the point of becoming the client’s ‘Trusted Advisor’
• Pricing our services, not by the number of hours it takes to do – clients really don’t give a damn about that – but by the value the service delivers to the client!

If we can do these seven things we will find that staff are easier to find, they stay longer, some will turn into fabulous partner and a=our two biggest challenges disappear like spit in the rain.

Seems like 70’s Rock stars Led Zeppelin got it right… The Song Remains The Same.