How Staff Feel About the Firm and the Profession

Source: Inside Public Accounting

Consultant Steve Erickson surveyed over 1,400 CPAs to find out how staff feel about the firm and the profession. Here are some results:

• Employees like their jobs and most (85 percent) have good relationships with clients and colleagues.
• Sixty percent have no interest in partnership.
• Forty percent say they are not planning to stay in the profession beyond three to five years.

There is an apparent incongruity in these responses. Why do most staff like their jobs but eschew partnership? Employees also indicated:

• They don’t know requirements for promotion in the firm.
• They don’t know requirements for more compensation.
• They don’t know what it takes to feel successful. Different partners expect different behaviors and performance.

Erickson believes in dual career paths—one for those who want to become partners and one for others. Those who don’t want partnership should be allowed to commit to a less demanding schedule while committing to giving their best efforts within that schedule. So if someone wants to work just 30 hours a week, but give his or her best for 30 hours, why not allow them to do that rather than push them to work more? A policy allowing for this sort of reduced schedule will keep many people from leaving the profession (and the firm), according to Erickson.

From Inside Public Accounting, March 2007, p. 6. The Platt Consulting Group (www.plattgroupllc.com). Subscription $369 per year; back issues—nonsubscribers $40. 317-733-1920.