how do you cope with your busy season?
by rick telberg
on management for aicpa career insider
it’s no secret that cpas from all walks of the profession struggle with work/life balance. but you don’t need to take my word for it. just ask helen lam of holmdel, n.j.
lam says she left a job as an audit manager to go to private industry because “i don’t see how firms can better manage year-end reporting workload without asking their employees to work 80-hour weeks for two straight months.”
work/life balance rates as a top concern for fully 90 percent of accountants. and with busy season looming for accountants from private industry to public, the topic is particularly acute today.
to be sure, the aicpa, state societies, cpa firms and financial executives up and down the line are seeking – and often finding – innovative ways of ameliorating the situation. in fact, leslie murphy, who takes over as the aicpa 2005-2006 chair in october, is expected to make work/life balance a key theme of her term.
if you have a success story, please tell us and we’ll share it with the profession. or you can go straight to our current study, “surviving busy season.”
but work/life balance becomes a greater concern the further you go down the corporate totem pole. nearly 85 percent of chief executives and managing partners surveyed said work/life balance is either a highly important or very important concern, compared to 93 percent of surveyed staff people and 90 percent of surveyed middle managers.
joan zawaski, a middle manager in a small cpa firm in san francisco, says the issue hits especially hard at smaller firms, which have enough trouble competing for talent with bigger firms. she noted that all of her firm’s hires last year either did not work out or left because of personal family issues, including three who departed for other firms.
one middle manager in a public practice firm, who asked to remain anonymous, noted that increasing workloads amid a reduced number of new applicants complicates firms’ attempts to meet employees’ personal life requirements. “no one wants to let others down, but we also need a life outside of work,” he lamented.
one public practice staff cpa said that his chargeable hours are being increased by 50 percent this year, adding, “my workload will be unpleasant even in the summer if hiring does not increase.”
the balance issue may weigh especially heavy on women. “as much as the profession tries to be family-friendly, its member firms are still very inflexible in working with women accountants who feel strongly about their commitment to the family and kids,” lam said.
“women who are talented need to be granted more flexibility to manage their work and home life,” added dolly rios, a staff cpa at a public firm in oakland gardens, ny.
meanwhile, public practice firms seem more receptive to women in all ranks in order to fight staffing shortages and because of the unique perspective women bring to accounting.
harley w. pottroff, president of an accounting firm that bears his name in manhattan, kans., noted that women are needed because they “are more empathetic than men and this profession is moving to understanding and away from the technical issues.”
the message to firms is becoming increasingly vivid: if you want talent people, you need to offer them some work/life balance.
now it’s your turn: surviving busy season: how the profession copes. join the study to find out.
9 responses to “cpas mull work/life balance on eve of busy season”
eileen h. law
here’s my work/life success story… we have several extra office spaces left open just for tax season. we hire cpa moms that just want to work 8-3 and sometimes hire senior accounting students from the local college to do the easy returns. they get 3 credit hours and we get to pay them $7 an hour. i don’t let my accountants work over 55 hours a week… i of course still work 80.
eileen h. law,
owner of eileen h. law, cpa, p.c.
nederland, texas
.
't.p.'
i think a great resource exists in allowing personnel to work full time during busy season and part time during the rest of the year. semi-retired personnel and working moms are just the start of who could be offered this workload flexibility. it would relieve the payroll expense during lulls in the workload and be an attractive benefit to many. teachers work 9 months of the year and everyone accepts that as the work schedule. something similar could be done for accountants. they could golf, travel, teach, etc during the slower month in the accounting cycle.
tracey williams
we have a very small office, ranging from three to seven of us. a few years ago we changed our business hours (after tax season ended) to monday thru thursday, 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. the office is closed on fridays. this was a bold move but we felt it was necessary at the time due to the children we all had and issues that we were having as a result. are we here before 9 a.m.? you bet. are we here after 2:30? most of the time we are. but if one of our children needs to be picked up after school, or they have a football game we need to attend, we don?t have to worry about rescheduling appointments, or missing the game. are we here fridays? yes, mostly. what happened as a result is that our billable hours increased tremendously, because we did not answer the phones after 2:30, we had no appointments, and we could actually concentrate on our work and get it done much quicker.
this may not work for larger firms, but for smaller offices, i say go for it. we did not lose a single client due to our hours, and in fact they complimented us on making the choice to put family as a priority. yes sometimes we schedule appointments after 2:30 and on fridays, but that is up to our own discretion. we now enjoy that first hour before nine, and can leave the office earlier in the afternoons if we want because we get our work done timelier. this is year 3 and we won?t go back. hope this can help someone else take the plunge and go for it! you can always work (you never run out of work), but you can?t always have that time with your family.
tracey williams, cpa
medford, oregon
.
'cpa, metro detroit area'
three years ago i left a very small firm (6 people) that was unbelievably inflexible. staff were required to work 8 hours every day. it did not matter if you worked 12 hours the day before, you still were required 8 hours every day, no excuses, unless you had a vacation day. they did not pay overtime. at the end of the year, at their discretion, there was maybe a bonus, if the firm did good as a whole. i was not informed of this until i had already made my move, and worked two weeks. my mistake for not asking about this, but our interviews were so friendly and casual, it seemed they would be a caring and flexible firm, and i had come from ten years at a firm that paid overtime, i never thought it was an issue. i have over 15 years in the profession, have nothing but compliments on my professional abilities from any employer, and came to them with over $50,000 in my own accounts. needless to say, they lost me and my accounts very quickly. (i am now at an extremely flexible firm and my personal account billings are now $90,000. in addition i have time to work on numerous audits and other engagements for the firm, handle the firms accounting and auditing administration, yet am still part-time and much happier).
as a side note, i have heard horror stories such as this from others in our profession. cpa firms need to stop trying to take advantage of their employees if they intend to keep good people.
“cpa, metro detroit area”
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laura ault
what ! it sounds like mr. pottroff [“women… ‘are more empathetic than men…’] did not learn any lessons from the contraversial statements made by harvard’s president, lawrence summers. all anyone could gather from that statement is that mr. pottroff believes that men are more technical than woman. what a shame that we are still having these types of conversations. work/life balance is an issue important to both men and woman.
sincerely,
laura ault
southport, ct
.
'controller in ny'
i?ve been in the profession for 18 years, and each year i become more and more frustrated with not being able to balance work and life. i come from blue-collar parents who worked 9 to 5 and played a very active roll in maintaining family values. it sickens me that this profession is all about demands and not rewards.
i also have to say that categorizing women as more needy of work / life balance is unfair. as a gay male in an eleven-year relationship, i have many domestic responsibilities that make me very needy of work / life balance.
but i have to also speak for my straight male friends in the profession. they too have work / life balance needs? whether it?s skiing, working out at the gym, or simply spending some time reading a book, all of us need work / life balance.
it?s not just a women with children issue!
corporate controller
tarrytown, ny
.
james huff, cfo
i wish i had a success story for you. truth is, i’ve been in the profession for 25 years and the profession has been paying lip service to this issue for all of those 25 years. why? simple. it’s called the utilization rate. a firm makes more when they can get some poor sap to work 80 hours a week in exchange for the remote chance of making partner someday.
the problem is simple to fix. just limit hours and hire more accountants. problem is, there goes the profit margin.
and don’t believe this hype about shortages of accountants! the profession is its own worst enemy. the profession still clings to the superstar rising to partnership model of hiring. there are lots of accountants available to fill the void if the firms diversified their hiring criteria and work environment. not everyone wants to be a partner in exchange for their waking life. it reminds me of the national guard’s recruitment problems. sign up for one weekend a month and two weeks active duty per year and what do you get?
james huff
chief financial officer
owings mills, md
.
'former big 4 audit manager in washington, d.c.'
it’s unfortunate, because my success story involves the answer firms don’t want to hear. i succeeded in obtaining work/life balance by leaving public accounting. work/life balance was the primary reason i left public accounting earlier this summer. i was a senior manager with the big 4 with a near-certain path to partner, but the hours really became too much. to me, it’s come to the point where the most talented people are pulled in too many different directions, and assigned too many different responsibilities. it’s especially tough when you rely on two incomes in the household, so both the husband and wife work full-time. on my main account, every one of us lamented the fact that our spouse had to work full time and do all the housework, and those spouses still hardly saw us. we could see the hours take their toll – i got tired of spending more quality time with my senior than my wife.
i believe the critical flaw with today’s environment is the tone set at the top. leadership in the big 4 seems to constantly preach about striving to improve work/life balance, but it appeared (to me, anyway) that this assertion doesn’t result in action. when i relayed this concern in my exit interview, partners would tell me about the flexibility, and say things like “you can leave at 3:00 some days to play golf”, or “we implemented a flex schedule this summer so you could take off every other friday”. my counter to that is that leaving at 3 every now and then is not worth the trade-off of being stuck at work until 7-8 or even later a lot of the time. and as to a flex schedule, it just meant 9 days of 10-11 hours to take the 10th off, and actually getting to take that day off was tenuous at best.
additionally, one thing that wasn’t covered in your article is that with the new 404 requirements, it’s become a lot harder for auditors to distinguish busy season from “normal” season, because the entire year is becoming busy season. when i started in public, i knew winters would be horrible, but the summers were flexible and easy, and that trade-off made it worth it. nowadays, summer hours stretch until 7 or 8 most of the time, and it removes some of the incentive for people to stick around. sure, we’d get a “treat” every now and then and get to start the weekend early by leaving at 3 or 4 on a friday, but those times are few and far between, and that happens just as often with my new job in industry.
it’s frustrating to me because i really enjoyed what i did in public accounting, and i enjoyed the complex issues and interesting things that come up on a day-to-day basis, but eating three meals a day at work is not what i wanted to do in my life. by far, the single-most important reason i left public was the lack of a work/life balance. and now that i’ve left, i continue to hear numerous stories from my friends still in public about working all the time, and i fear the attrition will continue. it’s a shame because it really is an outstanding profession – you learn so much in public about so many different things. in my opinion, it’s the best way to become a strong, well-rounded accountant. in my new job, i’m not learning as much, and i don’t get to see nearly as many of the complex/interesting issues i got to see in public, but at least i eat dinner with my wife every night, and that’s a benefit that i can’t quantify.
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jennifer r. cavender
i am a senior accountant (auditor) at a local orange county cpa firm of about 70 people. in november of 2004 i gave birth to my first child. i had worked out a flexible schedule with the partners of my firm prior to going on maternity leave that consists of 28 hours a week during the off season and 35-40 during the busy season. my client load has been reduced by 30% as well as my salary. it took some getting used to once i returned to work in february of 2005, but i spent most of the summer working out the kinks and i am now very comfortable with my schedule. it allows for me to make sure i can be there for the important events in my daughter life and to make sure my household is running smoothly. of course, i do get phone calls on my cell phone from time to time on my days off and there are times when i have to work from home, but that is the nature of having a career as opposed to a job.
because the firm has 2 managers and 1 partner that are also on similar schedules there is much support and encouragement for this type of thing.
thank you,
jennifer r. cavender
senior accountant
audit & business advisory services
haskell & white llp
.