why staff leave cpa firms… and how to keep them

the 14 top reasons they depart, plus insights from young employees.

by marc rosenberg
cpa firm staff: managing your #1 asset

the following data is from recent rosenberg surveys.

more: how to solve the big disconnect in talent management | what relevance means for staffing in accounting | how accounting staffing has changed
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firms’ annual revenue	2021	2020	2019	2016	2013
over $20 million	17.9%	14.5%	18.1%	18.1%	18.0%
$10-20 million	19.1%	15.6%	16.9%	16.9%	17.6%
$5-10 million	19.7%	15.3%	16.9%	16.8%	15.3%
$2-5 million	20.8%	15.9%	17.0%	17.0%	15.3%

 

main observations:

• in 2021, staff turnover was the highest in recent years, though not across the board. firms over $20 million did not experience much of a turnover increase, probably because they recognized early on that remote work was here to stay and liberally offered it to staff. but smaller firms, those under $20 million, were slower on the draw to implement remote work policies and as a result, some staff left their firms to join one that fully embraced remote work.
• also, as the covid-19 pandemic continued from its onset in march 2020, people got more accustomed to living with it and were not as fearful as they were in the beginning. with the increased comfort level with the pandemic, staff who didn’t want to change firms at the onset started moving.
• an increase in staff turnover during the covid-19 pandemic is likely due to the popularity of remote work that many firms embraced and chose to keep as a permanent work option. firms that weren’t offering this as an option were less likely to keep staff as flexibility became one of the biggest recruiting and retention tactics.

the top reasons staff leave cpa firms

there may be other reasons why staff leave, but the ones listed below are what we see time and again, both in our consulting and in survey results. the items are not ranked in any way.

1. a less-than-favorable relationship with the boss, be it a senior, manager or partner. when we use the term “relationship” it’s not just a matter of “is the boss a nice person.” equally important, do the supervisors help the staff learn, grow and advance?
2. a failure to measure or compensate partners’ performance based on their success at staff retention and mentoring, particularly at smaller firms. as we’ve said before, you get what you measure.
3. lack of challenge or variety in work and/or advancement opportunities.
4. below-market compensation. there are two parts to this:

• • a revolution in cpa firm compensation is taking place. why? because cpa firms’ revenue is robust, but they don’t have enough staff to get the work out. to avoid losing their staff to other industries, cpa firms have been awarding salary increases at levels previously unseen. it’s common for firms to be increasing staff compensation in the 8-15 percent range. some stars are getting even more.
  • a sea change has taken place over the past five to 10 years in terms of how cpa salaries for staff compare to other jobs. for decades, entry-level salaries for accounting majors were at the top of the pay scale, generally surpassed only by technology and engineering. but data from surveys of two national personnel organizations, indeed and career builder, indicate that while accounting salaries are still respectable, finance majors, investment bankers, business analysts, data scientists, web developers and graphic designers, among others, are getting paid more than accountants.

so cpa firms are severely challenged these days to pay their staff competitively. they need to stay competitive with prevailing pay levels, both within the cpa profession and outside of it.

5. lack of benefits offered. often this, coupled with higher compensation, is a reason staff end up leaving their firms. newer benefit offerings include dependent and child care aid, money toward student loan repayment, and stipends for technology such as home office equipment, internet and cellphones.
6. lack of staff engagement. jeremy wortman told us that just because staff are satisfied with their jobs doesn’t necessarily mean they are engaged with the firm. when staff are engaged, they think: “i get to go to work today,” instead of “i have to go to work today.”
7. lack of recognition for good work and hard efforts.
8. lack of flexibility as to when and where they work. covid-19 has been a game changer for these expectations.
9. lack of work-life balance. staff may enjoy their jobs, but when they think about a long-term career at the firm, they see the partners or even some managers “working all the time.” this causes some to lose interest in moving up the ladder because they don’t want to be slaves to their work.
10. lack of female role models: 60 percent of the staff at cpa firms are female, and 50 percent of college graduates are female. but only 20-25 percent of firm partners are female, an appalling statistic for the cpa profession. this causes many women to assume that becoming a partner is not feasible. the unfortunate part of this is that most women “deselect” their firms years before they leave without discussing the issue with any of the partners.
11. lack of feedback. young people thrive on feedback, yet most cpa firms fail to provide effective and prompt performance feedback.
12. lack of young co-workers. when we ask staff with one or two years’ experience what they like the most about their firms, the no. 1 answer every time is “the people i work with.” young people like working with other young people they can become friends with. many small firms employ few staff under 30; the average age may be beyond 40. this is a turnoff to young staff.
13. too demanding a job for some. to succeed, staff must have strong technical skills, be productive, work long hours when needed, endure the tax season, deal with the stress of deadlines and have decent interpersonal skills. not everyone is cut out to work in a cpa firm.
14. lack of diversity. as mentioned earlier, younger generations are looking for diversity, equity and inclusion in potential and current employers. staff want to feel a sense of connectedness to their peers from multiple standpoints (age, ethnicity, diversity of their broader community, etc.). firms have started organizing employee resource groups, which are groups of employees who meet to discuss their shared characteristics or life experiences and support one another, as a way to tackle this initiative.

what staff do like

chris frederiksen of panalitix (formerly 2020 group u.s.) surveyed a large number of young staff, and these are his findings about what they do like:

• they like the cachet of being cpas. firms must encourage staff to be active in the community and meet referral sources.
• they like being with clients. firms should maximize staff’s face time with clients. some misguided firms allow their partners to completely monopolize client relationships and face time, bringing all the client work into the office for staff to work on instead of letting them interact with clients and work in the field.
• they like learning. when ambitious, competent young people stop learning and cease to be challenged, they often quit. make your firm a continual learning organization.
• they like the flexibility of deciding when and where to work. firms should provide plenty of flexibility in these areas.
• they love technology, the more the better. they get turned off by firms that are attached to paper. they get turned off by partners who barely know how to turn on a computer.
• they like opportunities for input into changes in the firm. they like transparency. they hate surprises.

retaining staff: don’t underestimate the power of money

in addition to everything chris frederiksen’s survey indicates, other surveys consistently show that compensation and benefits are at or near the top of what attracts staff and what retains them.

here’s a great illustration. every other year or so, we conduct a staff forum in chicago. we ask 15 to 20 of the largest local firms in chicago to send us a staff person with one or two years of experience. for 2½ hours, we discuss their jobs, their firms, their partners and other supervisors and what’s important to them. results of the most recent staff forum are summarized in the next section.

one of our favorite moments is when we ask the young staff what they think the partners at their firms earn. their responses range from $150,000 to $250,000. a third of the responses are below $200,000. in the most recent session, the actual average income was $600,000. when we reveal this, their jaws drop.

one year a young man returned from the session, marched immediately into the managing partner’s office and said: “i just came back from rosenberg’s staff forum and found out how much money you guys make. what do i have to do to become a partner?”

when the managing partner told us of this, we asked him how the person was performing. the managing partner said his performance had been average at best. but in the years following this revelation, this staff person improved to the point where his performance was rated excellent.

doesn’t every truly successful employee define success in terms of both job satisfaction and money? they are not mutually exclusive. we can have both!

marc rosenberg’s morning with 17 young cpa firm staff

here are key questions and findings from one of our staff forums:

1. what do you like most about your job?

• • the people they work with
  • tremendous exposure to the business world
  • the work is never boring and they enjoy the opportunities to keep learning and be challenged

2. what do you like least about your job?

• • unrealistic time and budget expectations of partners
  • the stress
  • unpleasantness of the tax season

3. why did you choose the firm you work for?

very little had to do with ways that one firm might be truly different from another. examples: large vs. small. specialties. lots of young staff. training programs. leadership development and mentoring programs. winner of awards for best place to work. higher pay.

instead, most of the responses had to do with these factors:

• • how much the staff liked the partners they interviewed with (the importance of which can never be overstated)
  • location (downtown vs. suburban)

the takeaway: we know these firms. they are clients of ours. many of the firms are indeed different from the others. but this message never came across to the recruits in the interview process. so, when recruiting, make sure you do a good job of differentiating your firm from others.

4. what do you think of your firm’s mentoring programs?

only about half the firms had formal mentoring programs, but those staff who had them liked them.

throughout the years, one of the most hotly debated mentoring practices has been the match of the mentor and mentee. most firms opt to totally control this match. the group emphasized the importance of having the right mentor. several said that they didn’t click with the mentor initially assigned to them and this made the mentoring program ineffective for them. staff would like to be involved in the mentor selection process.

5. do you know what it takes to be a partner at your firm?

there was a resounding “no” to this question. this is inexcusable if your firm is serious about developing staff into partners.

many partners in firms across the country are of the opinion that today’s young people don’t want to be partners. we have long disagreed with this as a blanket statement. firms’ young people may say they don’t want to be partners simply because they don’t know how to become partners or what it means to be a partner. indeed, 60 percent of our group said they wanted to become partners.

firms need to do a much better job of

• • putting in writing what it takes to be a partner
  • mentoring the staff
  • constantly talking up to the staff why being a cpa firm partner is an amazing job. it’s fabulous because partners earn high incomes, are essentially their own bosses, function as entrepreneurs, have clients who love them and do challenging work for interesting businesses.

6. how many total hours do you think partners work annually?

the average cited by the group was a staggering 3,219 hours. the actual number, per the rosenberg survey, is 2,450. staff see partners working when they leave and know they frequently work nights and weekends. staff want to know that someday they can run a firm and have a life too. make sure they know you don’t work 3,200 hours a year. and if you do, be clear whether that far-above-average number is a requirement to become partner at your firm.

7. do women feel that their long-term career and partner opportunities are the same as men’s?

none of the women in this particular forum aspired to become partners because they don’t see it being compatible with raising a family. firms must work harder to communicate to their female staff that becoming a partner and raising a family are not mutually exclusive. 

8. what is your overall satisfaction with your job?

average rating was 7.9, with 10 the highest. we assume that the staff members who firms sent to our forum were considered at least average to above average. based on that assumption, we think firms would be unhappy with a 7.9.

9. what’s most important to staff?

staff ranked several factors in descending order of importance to them. 1 was high and 10 was low.

rank	important things that you want from your job and the firm you work for
1	compensation and benefits
2	advancement opportunities
3	work-life balance
4	challenge in your work
5	supervisors who are good bosses
6	training
7	flexibility on when and where you work
8	fun
9	appreciation and recognition
10	mentoring

 

10. what are examples of flexibility that appeal to you?

two responses consistently come out loud and clear and have for quite some time:

• • they want to be free of limits on when they start work and when they stop work. they want to be judged on the quality of their work and whether they completed the work on time, not whether they had their butts in seats.
  • they want to do more of their work remotely.

11. what is your preferred method of communication?

this may come as a surprise to many, but our group of young staff understood the importance of face-to-face communication. still, they preferred email over face-to-face communication because it gives them a record of what was stated and allows them more time to think about what to say.

12. what can your firm do that would retain you for at least five more years?

• give better feedback, especially more timely feedback.
• offer effective mentoring and leadership development programs.
• provide more client interaction.
• make the tax season less onerous.
• be more flexible about when and where they work.
• give better on-the-job training.
• employ lots of young people so a young staff person has a peer group.
• set more realistic budget expectations on jobs.

the high cost of turnover

much has been written about the high cost of turnover. almost all estimates range from six to nine months of an employee’s annual compensation. here is a worksheet for computing the cost of turnover at your firm.

computing the cost of turnover at cpa firms

hard turnover costs	dollars
separation processing, admin time and exit interviews
temporary staff to fill in, including the time to hire and train them
search-firm fees and staff referral bounties
interviewing and screening time of all personnel involved
training and ramp-up time for new employee; includes time of trainers, external costs and on-the-job training
other
less: cost savings while the position is vacant
total hard costs
soft turnover costs	dollars
lost productivity during disengagement; reduced hours and effectiveness
time discussing issues and the need for change
lost work production during vacancy, including work rejected because of lost capacity
impact of overburdened staff and their reduced effectiveness
client dissatisfaction with the turnover, perhaps measured by lost clients
other
total soft costs
total cost of turnover: hard + soft costs

 

posted on august 29, 2024