In the concluding part of our conversation with Jennifer Wilson, facilitator of the National Pipeline Advisory Group, she discusses the need for employers to take the lead in improving the day-to-day work life of their employees
In the first parts of our conversation with Jennifer Wilson, co-founder of and partner of ConvergenceCoaching and independent facilitator of the National Pipeline Advisory Group (NPAG), we focused on the tax & accounting profession’s need to address educational roadblocks and “tell a better story” in order to solve the profession’s chronic talent-shortage problem.
In the final part of this series, we discuss the recommendations in the NPAG’s Accounting Talent Strategy Report regarding the need to “enhance the employee experience,” which includes offering higher starting pay and improving the work/life balance of career accountants.
Thomson Reuters Institute: In the NPAG’s report, one sentence that was bolded for emphasis says, “…we must transform the reality of the workplace to have a truly better story to tell.” Can you talk about how this transformation might take place, and what positive change in the accounting profession might look like, starting perhaps with addressing salary concerns and improving work/life balance?
Jennifer Wilson: One of the core messages in the report is that we have to tell a better story — but to do that, we have to have a better story to tell, right? In the report, we discuss employer solutions in four or five big categories. One was starting salaries, and the second was reducing overwhelm, which you could call improving work/life balance, but it’s much bigger than that. The others were providing clear career pathways and making workplaces more inclusive where people have more of a sense of belonging and community.
For the salary data, we referenced a few credible third-party sources and found that universally, across the board, the tax & accounting profession had a lower average starting salary than many other professions that business majors might consider. [Note: For example, recent business graduates in 2022 going into computer sciences or engineering could command starting salaries of $86,964 and $76,249, respectively — whereas accounting majors had an average starting salary of $60,698.]
You can find out more about expanding the accounting pipeline, including the Pipeline Pledge here.
It’s hard to get Gen Z graduates excited about the prospect of working harder for less money, so we have to change that dynamic. For a long time, the story of accounting was, come on in and we’ll show you the ropes, you’ll pay your dues, apprentice for a few years, and someday you’ll make a lot of money. That delayed gratification of earnings is not a sellable message today.
Thomson Reuters Institute: So, is the solution then simply to pay accounting grads more money?
Jennifer Wilson: Yes, in part. We really need to do is look at ourselves as a profession that isn’t just competing with other finance departments or accounting firms, we’re competing with other businesses that attract accounting and business majors as well. When I talk about starting salaries with accounting firm leaders, they’ll say, Oh, we’re competitive with other firms — but that isn’t the benchmark anymore. We have to be competitive with other business majors.
Thomson Reuters Institute: And not just on salary, but also on work/life balance and other cultural factors in the workplace, is that correct? After all, there is almost a culture of pride about how hard accountants work, especially during tax season. And it seems that many young people have decided they don’t want to work in that type of culture.
Jennifer Wilson: If you study anything about Gen Z, you’ll find that they are focused on wellness and mental health. They don’t want to work in a profession that isn’t focused on how to work smarter, not harder. So then, the question becomes: How can we transform our business model to have a workplace that gives us joy? One in which we serve clients we love, doing work we love, in a way that gives us joy. And one in which we have a realistic workload and the right return on investment.
Thomson Reuters Institute: The burden of tax season seems to be a big deterrent for many people. How do you recommend that the profession address the “overwhelm” during its busy season?
Jennifer Wilson: In the report we go into this subject at length. There is a Red Badge of Courage thing in which people like to talk about how hard they work and how busy they are. Some of it is valid, and some of it is a bit of folklore, but it doesn’t serve our profession well, so we really have to look at our value system.
There are many things accounting firms can do, and are doing, to ease the tax-season burden, such as saying goodbye to difficult and unprofitable clients, or clients who aren’t ready, raising fees, and right-sizing the client base to match the firm’s actual capacity. Offshoring, outsourcing, and bringing on contractors and part-timers are all options as well. The larger question is how to provide employees with the flexibility they need and create a work culture in which the workload management makes sense.
Thomson Reuters Institute: How does workload management during the rest of the year play into the crunch during tax season? Are there ways to spread the pain around?
Jennifer Wilson: Workflow and project management can always be improved. Automation and technology are components in the formula for success as well. Technology can help us strip away unnecessary and mundane work, which can help with the workload. In the report we also emphasize that firms can benefit from much more non-traditional staff — non-accounting grads — added to the work stream, so that we’re not having accountants and CPAs doing operational and customer-service functions like calling clients for their K1s.
If you strip away the administrative work so that accountants are not overwhelmed by it, they then can focus on the more technical work, on relationships with clients, and on higher-value strategic activities.
Thomson Reuters Institute: In addition to the talent pipeline problem, the profession also faces issues of burnout, retention, and dissatisfaction with opportunities for career advancement. What strategies can firms implement to address these issues?
Jennifer Wilson: The career pathway discussion is multi-faceted, but one aspect of it is that we need to do a better job of letting folks know that there is more to a career in accounting than tax and audit here — that there are all kinds of cool paths people can take in this profession.
The other thing is that you want to make sure people know what it takes to progress in your firm. We could progress our people much faster if we had clear competency models that were published by level and by discipline, so it becomes super clear what specific skills and knowledge people need to demonstrate to progress. There are templates available for these competency models, these pathways, and firms could leverage these resources to create their own model. The clearer we can be about all the options and opportunities available for people in our accounting firms or departments, the better retention is going to be.
Thomson Reuters Institute: It sounds as if there are no easy answers to the talent pipeline problem — indeed, that it needs to be a coordinated effort on many different fronts. Is any single starting point more important than the others?
Jennifer Wilson: Well, employers have the most to gain from solving the pipeline challenge, and they have the most to lose by not taking action — so, not surprisingly, they have the most actions to take.
The most transformative actions currently live in the employer realm, for sure, both in accounting firms and corporate finance departments. We need every employer focused on this, because it will feed all other aspects of the pipeline if we can create better word of mouth about what it’s like to work in this profession. That’s the tell a better story part, and it will help us immensely.
You can find all three parts of this series about the National Pipeline Advisory Group (NPAG) and how to address the talent shortage in the tax & accounting industry, here.
