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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