Who Should be Promoted This Year?


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Source: Possibilities for CPA Firm Leaders, the Blog of Rita Keller

The following is the complete blog entry of Rita Keller for June 10, 2008, reprinted with permission.

The topic of promoting people inside your CPA firm, to me, is of HUGE importance and a topic that is not widely discussed.

We are seeing times of bringing in lateral hires from the Big Four and other large firms. These newcomers often make the loyal, “moving up the ladder” team members pause to consider their options.

A post on Jack Welch’s blog triggered this thought process for me. It sometimes seems very unfair inside CPA firms when it comes to promotions. Maybe your Gen-X employees will accept the quick advancement of the lateral hires and the slow advancement of those within—but your Millennials and the high performers will not.

During my presentations, I always URGE leaders of the CPA profession to establish MORE levels inside their firms for advancement and to definitely speed up the process. You must be competitive with the national firms. They promote to Senior after 2 or 3 years, promote to Manager at 4 to 6. At many local firms it takes 4 or 5 years to become a Senior and 8 or 10 to become a Manager!

When your recruiting efforts pay-off (and you are all doing some pretty awesome things in this area), don’t forget to keep your word. Your high-performers won’t wait¬—they will move on.

They want to see advancement quickly so they can tell Mom and Dad that they got a promotion and a pay increase.

One way to address this is to establish even more levels within your firm. In years gone by (I sure hate to use that term—don’t keep thinking of “years gone by!”), many firms decided to make a flatter organization, even doing away with titles and making everyone either an Associate or a Partner.

Please consider: Staff Level I (entry level), Staff Level II (2 - 3 years before they make Senior), Senior (3 to 5 years), Supervisor (4 to 6), Manager (5 years and up), Senior Manager, Director and then Partner. Maybe even add Principal between Director and Partner. Of course you should use your own variations but with summer performance evaluations and pay increases coming up it is a good time to look at changes you can announce going forward.

Go through your normal process for this season (don’t change the rules on them without plenty of advance notice). But as you move into your next performance cycle introduce a new method—continual change and improvement needs to be the foundation of your culture.

This could be rolled out at your State of the Firm meeting this summer or fall or explored at your fall partner retreat. Let me know if you need ideas and guidance.

Remember, the little things make the biggest difference. I love the following quote—that is what this blog and I are all about—I hope I am lighting a fire inside you and inside your firm.

From Possibilities for CPA Firm Leaders (June 10, 2008), the Blog of Rita Keller, shareholder of Brady Ware, a nationally known regional CPA firm. Rita is also a nationally known consultant, speaker and author on CPA firm management. Visit http://cpamanagement.blogspot.com/.

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