best people practices for small firms with kristin murray & jennifer wilson | gear up for growth

kristin murray and jennifer wilson reveal strategies for growth, culture, and staff retention.

[preview] the complete video episode, including commentary, analysis, notes, takeaways, additional background information, and transcript,  is exclusively first available to 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research pro members first. | go pro here.

stream, listen, download, and subscribe to 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 podcasts anywhere:
apple, google/youtube, spotify, iheart, deezer, amazon music and audible, player fm, audacy, rss

gear up for growth
with jean caragher
for 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间

gear up for growth spotlights the best strategies for smart and efficient growth in today’s competitive landscape. more gear up for growth every friday here.|  more capstone conversations with jean caragher every monday | more jean caragher here | get her best-selling handbook, the 90-day marketing plan for cpa firms, here | more the 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 broadcast channel

 

transcript
(produced by automation. not edited for spelling or grammar)

jean caragher 

let’s dive in and talk a bit about firm growth. kristin, as managing partner, what is your major challenge related to firm growth?

 

kristin murray 

probably no surprise this industry, it’s is attracting and retaining talent. you know, without that, there is no growth. and given the landscape of our industry right now, that’s everybody’s biggest challenge. if it’s not, i’d be amazed,

 

jean caragher 

i don’t know of any firm leaders who say that they have; they’re just all staffed up, and they have every person that they need. and if anybody did say that, you know, they may be fibbing a little bit, right? because you’re right. without the people to attract the business, without the people to work on the clients. you’re really stuck right

 

kristin murray 

exactly, exactly, and, and it’s challenging in so many ways, being in a big metropolitan city like houston, you know, we go up against everybody, you know, and you go out to these campuses to recruit, and the big four will come in and make everybody an offer because of the landscape of where we are. so, you know, differentiating yourself and providing a different environment that for people who don’t seek that as their career is where we aim to try to fill that niche and get the people in.

 

jean caragher 

so tell me regarding your marketing and business development efforts as it relates to firm growth. do you see that? do you see that as a steady effort, or does the talent crisis prohibit you from doing it that? or do you see it more just coming and going as you have the capacity?

 

kristin murray 

i don’t, i don’t think we ever put the brakes on business development, but we are choosier, i guess is what? what i’d say, we also look at our current client base and say is, is, is this client still a good fit every year? because we have these opportunities coming in, we are blessed. i’ve got a lot of great shareholders who naturally attract business to the firm, and we are blessed with a lot of referrals. and so we always have to be asking ourselves, is this a good fit client for us, and is this client that we’ve had forever still a good fit client for us? and that’s how we continue. but we don’t stop business development. we just figure out how to best service, what we have and what to bring in.

 

jean caragher 

so as a new marketing consultant, that’s just music to my ears.

 

kristin murray 

you know? i know,

 

jean caragher 

i know. we are aware of a lot of firms who just at this point are saying we just have more than we can handle, and we’re busy. why are we bothering doing any of these things? so to say that you’re being consistent with it and smart about it is that’s, that’s the number one takeaway for every listener. so. far, you’ve got to be out there consistently. so, jen, i know you’ve been involved with this national pipeline advisory group, take a minute to share the mission of that group and what that’s about.

 

jennifer wilson 

okay, so the national pipeline advisory group is a group of 22 diverse stakeholders that include academics and firms of all sizes, and finance department folks and state society representatives, all from different backgrounds and perspectives in different states and geographies that have come together to study in a data driven and inclusive way, the pipeline problem and the pipeline problem that kristin just illustrated with recruiting and retention being her number one issue, and it, and you also, kristen highlighted the, you know, the on campus pipeline component, but pipeline essentially goes from middle school and high school all the way through the first five years of employment after that. of course, retention is important, but that first five years, they really have to feel, you know, pulled, and we have much better retention after five years than we do in that first five in our profession. and so that’s what this study, we’ve been studying since july of 2023 the pipeline issues. and we’ve done, you know, a bunch of research focus groups, feedback, talked to many, many stakeholders and associations across the profession, and we’ve also done a national survey and a student survey. read 30 different research reports that also did incredible research and really came down to six big themes where we have issues in the pipeline or where we should really focus our efforts as participants in the profession. one is telling a better story, and we’ve been saying to tell a better story, you have to have a better story to tell, and that directly ties to create a more engaging employee experience. because if we don’t want to fake people out and get them into the profession thinking that it doesn’t have some challenges like busy seasons and capacity issues. we’ve got to be straight about where we are, but we don’t highlight we tend to be over focused on the negative. that’s for sure. we like to talk about how hard we work and things like that, and we don’t focus right?

 

jean caragher 

gosh, am i tired? oh, boy, another weekend. i can’t do anything that makes it sound really exciting, right?

 

kristin murray 

sign me up, right?

 

jennifer wilson 

we don’t show the pay stub of a partner, you know. so, you know, like, we should be publishing partner tax returns and, i mean seriously, like that, and pay isn’t just the only reason to do it, the meaningful work, the difference we make for clients. there’s a ton of stuff on tell a better story and make the employee experience more engaging. we also need to pull people through the education experience. when they get to college and choose an accounting major, we have to pull them through instead of weed them out, and really find ways to support them there, support them in the cpa exam experience. that’s super crucial. we have to, you know, really do a better job of attracting and retaining underrepresented minorities. that’s a tremendous issue. minority groups are not represented in our profession in the same percentage that they are represented in the us population. and boy, do we have to work on that, and then we also have to work on reducing the time and cost of education to be in our profession and find new pathways and more flexible ways to get the time and education and competencies and skills to be an accountant or be a cpa. so those are our big six themes. and you asked about somebody to bring along to this conversation. i thought of kristen and weinstein spiro, because they are doing so many cool things in so many of those areas, and are having success with them. and i thought amplifying that in this conversation would make a lot of sense.

 

jean caragher 

wonderful. yeah. so i want to follow up kristen with you about one of those themes that jen just talked about transforming employer cultures and business models. can you share with us a little bit about your efforts in that area? sure. so,

 

kristin murray 

you know, i mean, we’ve known there’s been an issue with attracting talent, and so, you know, a lot of trying to think outside the box and how we can service clients, and while keeping the culture in a way that people want to work for us, right? so one of the things that we’ve done is on the tax side, has implemented these, these positions called tpcs, and they are basically folks that come in that are not accounting degreed, may have a degree in something like, you know, computers, or maybe aren’t even degree but just people with a lot of snap and aren’t afraid of computers. and they are the first line on our tax prep they come in, they set up the work pay. papers for us, they have a number of tasks that they can do. and so it takes, it’s not work that requires you to have actual accounting knowledge. it’s just organizational good management skills, able to have snap and energy and be part of the whole rigor of the tax season. and we have three of them right now. they’re fabulous. they’re absolutely fabulous, and they take, you know, that whole first bunch of hours off of the entire staff group to begin with. we also have people. we’re really blessed that we have some leo like lifers with us that know all of our clients. and so we’ve also implemented a new position where we’ve taken some of these folks, and they are what we call client service reps, and they are doing the work of getting information into the firm where, like, a manager or a senior might have to be contacting the client to say, hey, you still haven’t gotten us your w2 or they are doing this for the manager group, thus taking that work off of their day to day activity and getting work in. so we’re doing a number of things where we’re analyzing, and we’ve done that the also the client service rep on the audit side as well, just to get that, that work that doesn’t need to be done by people who are degreed in accounting, these are still smart, talented people. they’re just doing the work that we don’t we break down the task so that we don’t have to have, you know, everybody thinking that this has to start with a cpa and end with a cpa, right,

 

jean caragher 

right? and then they’re doing less of these admin tasks, if you will, and focusing on the hard work right of helping the clients with their taxes and financials, and, you know, the whole myriad of other services that the firm offers, which in turn makes their job a bit more exciting, if you will, or challenging, and something that they like to do, yeah, and,

 

kristin murray 

and, you know, anybody knows anything, or looking at this generation, they’re super focused on learning, they’re super focused on the feedback, and they’re super focused on where their career is going. and so this gets them a little bit into that pipeline a little bit sooner than, you know, doing a repetitious task for two years before they actually start. so, you know, some of our youngest folks interface with clients and and do that stuff really early on in their career.

 

jean caragher 

and i also understand you, of course, you know you’ve got a section on your website about the firm culture, and you know that word culture is becoming more and more important these days and used a lot. and i’m sure that some of those culture descriptions are very accurate, and some of them may, you know, not be so accurate. so, you know, we know the messaging that a firm provides needs to be genuine. because, you know, once a person steps in your door or enters your you know, zoom room or teams room, they’re going to determine whether that culture is real or not. and you you talk about a flexible schedule, your time, bank system, work life, balance. can you talk a little bit more to that and the reception that those items or benefits, if you will have on your team?

 

kristin murray 

sure. so, you know, i came up to be managing shareholders through the hr side of things. so i’ve always been our people person. you know, from way back dress for your day to, you know, we had a work from home day before covid started, like, just as a thing, you know, like you have a plumber coming work from home that day. we’ve always been able to so when covid hit, like me calling an audible and saying, everybody pick up your laptop and leave, that was like a nothing for us. and so, living in a city like houston, we’ve realized that, you know, it’s basically like the state of rhode island. it’s, you know, it can take you an hour and a half to get from your house to our office. so after covid came and went, we realized that that one day from home wasn’t enough, but we need to do something else. so we do have a hybrid work and it’s basically the general framework of it, it’s, it’s two days in the office and three days from home. but the two days in the office is, is a very intentional two days. it doesn’t actually have to even be in the office. it could be, you pick two days to go to a client, and we count that as being in the office. it could be, come in from 10 to three to get you know, collaborative reviews done with your team, or give a performance review, or meet with a client that wants to come in and meet with us. it’s not meant to be, you know, a day where you’re, you know, maybe have a super focused work it’s a day that you’ve decided that this makes sense. i’m going to be with my team. i’m going to be walking through things with them, whatever it is, and, you know, often, a lot of times, for the shareholder group, that means i’m having a shareholder meeting, because i find they pay more attention to me in a room than they do on zoom, um, but, but it’s, it’s those kinds of things, and so, um, you know, we allow that flexibility. we also allow the flexibility in terms of, we have core hours, so we have a meeting of the mind when we’ll all be available to each other. uh, but, you know, we gave up those mandatory saturdays a bazillion years ago, and people in our firm are relatively young. i have one lady who’s worked for me for years. she got fell in love, got married, has four kids under the age of eight. you know, if she has about, you know, ballet class with her kids at three o’clock, that’s okay. get your hours in after three that’s past our core hours. so we have lots of people who manage t ball teams and things like that, and that’s super important. that’s part of our culture is lots of young children, lots of young families, lots of working moms. so we’ve made that effort to make it super, you know, super, you know, kind of fluid in how you get your work done. and you know, even in busy season, you know, you work on saturday, great. i’m not, you’re working sunday, great. i’m not. you’re getting all your hours done during the week. that’s how it works. you know, we’re, nobody needs to know as long as you’re, you know, if you’re communicative, we’re okay with it, right? because

 

jean caragher 

we also know that there are firms that are not adjusting to these flexible schedules. and jen, i’d like your input on that as the author of this is it anytime, anywhere, work, study? it just took a pandemic like for first dive right in, right to working from anywhere. can you speak for a minute to what you see with these different plans of firms, of working anywhere, and how that is impacting productivity? sure,

 

jennifer wilson 

i’ll talk about how it impacts culture and productivity, because both of those things are important. but first, i just want to acknowledge that many, many firms were really leading in this area before the pandemic, and weinstein’s fire is one of them. and kristen was the person in her firm who, you know, stuck her neck out and took the risk back when she was a tax partner leading the hr and culture initiatives for the firm. you know, she she had the guts to say, hey guys, we have to be more flexible. we can’t be this rigid. we can’t have standing office hours and force people to stay through dinner and come on saturdays. and so she abolished all of that a long time ago, which is super cool, and, and, and was progressive. and they were better positioned. all these people that did this before the pandemic were better positioned during the pandemic, for sure, you know, now, post pandemic and post you know, now, high gen z influx, you know, 27 and down there, we have a meaningful number coming into our workforce. there is an expectation of flexibility, both in in the hours and the days i work, and also flexibility in the location from which i work. and there are a whole bunch of constructs that have to be in place to make that work. one of them is something you heard her kristen just say, and she she inferred. we have to infer it in what she said. and that is the culture of trust. we’re going to trust people to get their stuff done. and when, when a firm can really say, hey, you know the key is, you have assignments, and we have deliverables, and we have to produce a certain amount every day, especially during the peak periods with deadlines. and i trust that we’re going to get that done, and you’ll have the flexibility to do it in the way that works for you and your life. but i trust that you will also put the firm’s work in its proper priority place, and you will make it happen. and culture, cultures that have that and foster that trust, not like i don’t trust you. so here’s all the checks and balances we’re going to put in place, and all the rigor and rigid structure that that chafe that next gen millennials and gen zs, they don’t love it. so, you know, i love, i love that component, that trust component. but you know, firms are definitely being challenged to manage hybrid and remote folks. and in fact, it is a strategy to have borderless recruiting and hire people from anywhere and and if you’re going to do that, boy, you have to have have plans for how you manage productivity. the biggest thing with productivity is clarity of expectation and and so firms that are clear about expectation, what are my deliverables? how much am i supposed to produce? what are the results i’m to produce, versus ours? which are inputs we have to be clear about outputs, more clear about what i have to deliver and when, the when part and how much per day and how much per week, especially in those peak periods where we want to manage it a little bit tighter so we don’t end up with huge mountains of work at the end. good project management, super critical to have a productive workforce too, and regular huddles and discussions and reporting and check ins to get people put in more or less effort, depending on where we are in the process, and move work around. you know, you’ve got to have those things in place to be productive. but if you do have them in place, we see high productivity because people are motivated and they feel like i’m seeing kristen just said, you know, you’re coaching a little league. we think that’s important, that may. people feel seen and valued and and recognized for the people they are outside of work, and as much as we could do that, the more culture lift we can have. the other piece is just fun. it’s harder to have fun when we don’t all gather on a at a park and do the three legged race or whatever. i mean, it’s a little harder to conceive of fun when i first met kristen 14 years ago, when i first met kristin, she was a key member of a committee they called the fun brigade, which they still have. and i wanted to ask you about that. also always look at the audrey and then she can tell about it, yeah, the fun brigade. you know, i love the firm when i met them, because they had a fun brigade, you know, and we, and it is the best practice and culture to have a fun committee and to have some group of people hatching fun because it’s so easy to be just grinding on the work and achieving and climbing and checking stuff off, and not like laughing and having fun. and so part of culture for any firm, regardless of hybrid or remote, is some kind of intentional fun. but then when you have remote and hybrid boy innovating that fun, and including people that do not live in our towns where we have physical offices, is even more challenging. and so maybe kristen, you want to jump in here and talk about the fun brigade and what you guys have done? sure, so,

 

kristin murray 

i mean, fun is one of our core values to begin with, but, but the fun brigade itself was born out of our 50th anniversary. and i don’t even remember who came up coined the 50 fabulous fridays, but that’s how it started. and and me and and what we we dub her now the ceo of happiness, my cohort, denise, here at the firm. she, she and i took it on to come up with 50 fridays where there would be just a fun activity. and i mean, this was everything from, you know, nerf gun target shooting to airplane air paper airplane contest to, you know, make your best, you know, derby hat kind of thing. it could be anything. it was ice cream truck showed up, you name it. and so that year went on, and everybody loved it. and, of course, you know, so we said, well, we’ll continue with the fun brigade. it won’t be every friday, because it, you know, it’s a lot, but, but we do have a fun brigade, and we do continue these things and and with the remote, we’ve been very intentional that a number of these things, yes, there are still in person events like the ice cream truck will still show up from time to time. but we also found ways to bridge this over zoom. and so, you know, it could be bingo on the zoom call. it could be, you know, for now, every new hire that comes in is highlighted in a fun brigade activity, no matter where they live or what they do. and it usually is on a friday afternoon, right after they start. and 60 people get on to meet this person, no matter where they live and where they work. and we learn all kinds of incredible facts through a game or a contest or something. we give out prizes all the time, and and so it’s just continued onward. and it is we have lunches in the office. if you want to come in, there’s no pressure, don’t show up. but they’re crazy lunches, like, what a burger, or, you know, make your best tacos, or, you know, it could be anything. who makes the best chicken tender contest, where people come in and try, you know, all the local brands of chicken tenders, you know? i mean, it’s just whatever, you know, comes up, and we have, we bring in our young folks to be part of those things too. so it is, it’s just, it’s just part of who we are. and i always say, if we get the intern in, we’re converting 100% of those to hires. because once you, once you’ve been here, it is a fun place to work,

 

jean caragher 

right? that all sounds fantastic. so let me take a step back. kristen, when you were looking to make these changes within the firm, tell us how easy or difficult that process was,

 

kristin murray 

well, i mean, to be honest, it’s easier now, in the sense that, you know, it’s kind of like the first change you had to make was, like, pushing the boulder up the hill, you know, like, how can we let people wear peep toe shoes? that’s like, you know, sacrilege, you know. or, you mean, people will get work done at home if we let them work that one day, you know. so, you know, obviously, much different environment now, but, but we’ve always started everything as a pilot program. i mean, that’s kind of like a trick. jen tommy, you call it a pilot program. and then you can call the audible on what’s not working right. you can retool it until you’ve got it right? so we started everything, and we still start everything that way. i think there’s more faith now we’ve implemented so many different things, you know, from the dress for your day to maternity policies to, you know, work from home. so it’s just there’s more buy in from the group bed. it is, you know. and so the first few were hard, but i think if you get it moving and you and you can see successes, i think people just find, i mean, nobody ever complains we’re having a fun brigade activity, you know. no, i don’t get, oh, my god, that’s 30 people in a conference room wasting 30 minutes their day. it’s not 30 minutes wasted. it’s 30 minutes of bonding. it’s 30 minutes of camaraderie. it’s 30 minutes of stress relief, whatever you want to call it. you know, people recognize it. you know, it’s mental health. month yoga was going on two days ago in, you know, in the other room with a yoga instructor, you know, i mean, that’s what we do. so,

 

jean caragher 

so can you, can you tie the all these efforts to how the impact it’s having on your retention. do you have any statistics you could share of the impact? yeah.

 

kristin murray 

i mean, i think i, what i can say is, you know, if, if, if we look back three, four or five years ago, we were probably running, you know, at the high level of of turnover, you know, the above 20% it, you know, which may other firms may have been experiencing that as well. but i’d say is we are, you know, probably more in the 10 to 12% now and and when you have that 10 to 12% what you realize is, some of that is you selecting out people who don’t fit into the culture or can’t do the work. some people we have, you know, i mean, we’ve been around for 62 years, so we have retirement in there as well. and then we have the people who leave. but what we were seeing back five years ago were the people that were leaving were leaving us for industry or other cpa firms. and that is just really sad, you know, like you don’t want that. that’s not why you want people to leave you. you want them to say, i’m going to be a stay at home mom. i have a different we’re moving to alaska, and i can’t do it, you know, whatever it is, and and now we retain the people who move away. so now we have people in seven states, so they don’t even say that anymore. but it’s that kind of thing that you just it was sad to see them go talented people leaving you, and that’s what we had to stop, right?

 

jean caragher 

that all sounds fantastic, and i know you’ve given, you know our listeners, a lot of great ideas. so one more question before we end. for today, back to the national pipeline advisory group. another one of the themes, jen, that you mentioned earlier was growing support for cpa exam candidates. and we all seen the statistics about the how the numbers are changing. the people are taking a cpa exam is going down. and kristen, i understand weinstein, spira helps team members to pass the cpa exam in your efforts in those areas, how do you feel helping those team members and encouraging them to take the exam or to earn the cpa credential? do you do you see any correlation there from what you’re doing to help them to results.

 

kristin murray 

yeah, in fact, yesterday we we had another 1/4 part pass. so yes, no, and many other parts passed yesterday as well. it’s super exciting. it’s, you know, we weren’t having anyone said. it was kind of one of those things where it was just nobody had there was no inertia behind it. and we, we taxed our group that deals with training and mentoring to come up with something. and so they came out with a program where they were offering, like, study time, where we’d sponsor dinner, and we, we do different things, but so we drilled out a number of different options we have. we bonus people. first of all, that was, like the big carrot, like, maybe that will get some people interested. so there’s a $10,000 bonus. you pass it, you get $10,000 and then we decided that when we have capacity in our system, that we want to give them time, because time is the most valuable commodity that they need to get through this exam. and so we prioritize people who have elected to sit for the exam and have scheduled a part when there’s capacity in the system, they get time on the clock to study in the office or at their house, wherever they are, and so we give them that time. and so i’ll tell you, in the fall, going up to the christmas holiday, 33 exams were sat for we’ve had five or six people complete the exam. we have a whole bunch of people who are at their third, or, you know, third part, waiting on the results see if they pass it, or they’re on the their fourth part now. or, you know, i mean, it’s just and, and it’s created not only what we did, but what they did as a community of people like so they started helping each other. you know, you sat for that part. what should i know about that part? can you help me? i didn’t pass it last time. let’s all study together on the same part. so we can, you know, i mean, and so it’s, it’s almost like, you know, they started doing this stuff, and they’re all in it together. and so people have goals. now i’m. gonna finish that. we had people sit for the exam during busy season. they said, i am not going to be stopped. i must get through this. it’s unbelievable. it’s, i mean, i couldn’t have envisioned it going this well when we started it, but it’s unbelievable.

 

jean caragher 

that is a wonderful story of collaboration and teamwork and people, you know, holding each other up, you know, to achieve, you know,

 

kristin murray 

everybody’s super happy. and that’s saying everyone’s super happy when they hear someone’s pass. nobody’s mad about they hadn’t done it. they’re high fiving. i mean, they they email all the shareholders, i’ve got a part done, and we all scream, yay. you know, it’s good.

 

jennifer wilson 

it’s huge.

 

jean caragher 

any less word on that? yeah. i

 

jennifer wilson 

mean, i just, first of all, i kind of makes me declamped, or feel like, you know, bursting out with tears of joy or something, because i’m serious. it’s, it’s a firm of 85 people that had 30 some odd parts taken in the last 12 months, or even six months. that’s amazing and, and it’s all because leadership said, hey, we can develop programs and try some things to be supportive encouragers. we can empower our people to do this, not like threaten them that they won’t get promoted if they don’t do it or not like, separate the haves and have nots and make the have nots feel bad about themselves. instead, they just created this super encouraging program with lots of components, and listen to the people about what would be helpful to them try different things, and they have got momentum, and it’s real and it’s and it’s not super expensive, you know, it’s not like they spent that, you know, hundreds of 1000s of dollars to get all these parts taken and passed. they’re minting cpas at a good clip. it’s a real success story, and any firm can do it. and that’s one of the reasons that i just want to amplify the heck out of that story at weinstein spiro, because they’re killing it, not just in this but in so many other ways on talent.

 

jean caragher 

i’m glad you mentioned that, jen, because i know our listeners are going to be coming from firms of all sizes, and i believe that everything that we’ve just talked about today is relevant no matter what size a firm is.

 

kristin murray 

it definitely is. i mean, i’m i tell general to i’m not smarter than anybody else. if i if we can figure this out, anybody can do this, anybody can do this.

 

jean caragher 

well, that seems like a good spot for us to end. i’ve been speaking today with jennifer wilson from convergence coaching, and kristen murray of weinstein spira. thank you, jen and kristen, for your participation today.

…

 

posted on september 27, 2024