Xpitax News Articles
The Talent Drain;
Motherhood & Starting a Family
Has your firm lost talented employees or struggled with managing the workload of professionals lost to motherhood? Many professionals are putting their careers on hold, compromising their family life to the extent it is hurting their professional performance, or worse, leaving their current firm to find a place closer to home to cut down on the commute. Although we are not psychologists we do understand when employees are stressed, and pulled in too many directions their performance erodes and it can have an unfavorable impact on the rest of the staff.
What issues are working parents in the CPA profession facing?
- Day Care. Restraints on drop off and pick up times, plus severe penalties with late pickups add to deadline pressures.
- Office Commute Times. More than a ten or fifteen minute commute adds to the time crunch. This can cause an employee to consider leaving the profession or seek work at a firm closer to home.
- Client Commute Issues. Even if the office is next door to their home, they still need to get to the client's geographical location.
- Client Meeting Schedules and Fieldwork Conflicts. Arranging meetings around childcare concerns is not something most clients want to or need to hear. Even with a great relationship, when a client is paying top dollar they don't want to modify their workday to accommodate their service provider's needs.
How can these issues be overcome?
- Day Care. Little flexibility exists unless a more expensive care provider such as a nanny is located and then costs can become an issue.
- Office Commute Times. Short of moving, the physical travel of the individual cannot be changed. What can be altered is the movement of the work files. Paper files can be converted to electronic formats and with a good workflow solution, the employee can work at home, all or part of the time, and restrict their difficult physical travel to key client or office needs.
- Client Commute Issues. If this becomes too stressful to overcome, change the employee's role. Make them responsible for review work or other responsibilities that reduce face-to-face client interaction.
- Client Meeting Schedules and Fieldwork Conflicts. Why stress out the client and the employee? Alleviate their load by deploying client meetings to employees who have the freedom to conduct them. By changing the time constrained employee's role, you are not demoting them, you provide the opportunity to continue to work at their pace. If they want to have the hectic schedule of full-time work and parenting, let them be responsible for that choice. It's offering the choice that's the key idea.
How can the firm and employee benefit from work and parenting demands?
- Reducing employee stress will produce more productive hours. Happier employees will put their maximum effort into their shorter workday.
- Change can create opportunities to improve the business model. Take steps to increase the current income from the practice and increase the value of the firm. By adding more tax work it provides the opportunity to mine the tax only clients for investments, insurance, estate planning, elder care, etc.
- Additional tax work. Have your business development staff and partners sell more tax engagements. To deliver on the additional tax work, use your administrative staff to scan the documents, contract with an outsourcing company to prepare the returns, and let your "at home" resources review the returns.
For returns which are not being outsourced, our workflow solution (the XCM) allows your "at home" people to send documents back and forth electronically.
- Additional data analysis. "At home" workers can review data and feed partners and managers who have the time to conduct client meetings. As part of their job, they can also analyze data for trends, cost figures, productivity, ratios, and more. It can turn data into information that creates advisory engagements. The end goal is to add value beyond compliance, increase client retention, and create new revenues.
- Enhancing your recruiting image. Imagine the power of attracting junior and senior workers with a flex minded, worker friendly firm. Today's workers have a different mindset than the worker of twenty years ago.
- Locking talent into the firm. By offering flexibility and the opportunity to conduct "higher level" review and analysis work, employees are more likely to stay with your firm. The key is to keep these professionals contributing so they feel a needed part of the practice. Very few professionals want to completely abandon their careers.
These changes will appeal to staff. The days of "long hours and hard work" is being replaced by a younger generation that places a high value on the quality of life issues as a significant factor in their work decisions.