Sheffield Business Leaders discuss recruitment & retention issues in the Accountancy sector

21st July 2023

Accountancy Training Provder First Intuition held a round table discussion with business leaders from the finance profession. The purpose of the session was to engage with recruiting businesses, to understand their struggles within the sector.

We wanted to identify what issues they were having around recruitment, retention and the culture of new employees. 

There was a selection of small, large, new and established businesses in attendance which enabled us to gain valuable information from businesses around the local area. The feelings throughout every business was that there was a huge issue in recruitment – finding the right fit and the right attitude seemed to prove difficult. Once they had been successful in recruiting the right person, most struggled to keep them as other companies would poach with bigger and better offers.

20 years ago, a training contract with an accountancy firm meant that you felt locked in with that firm. You would stay the whole time and ensure you kept up with your studies – now, that commitment to one employer is no longer prevalent and young people are more likely to ‘job hop’ than ever before. There has been a cultural shift that seems to have happened over a very short period – people used to stay in positions, wanting to climb that corporate ladder. What seems like long term to those in the profession 20 years ago, is no where like what the young people of today see. When we say ‘long term’, we are thinking of the next 10 years, where as the young people of today are thinking 1, maybe 2 years. 

This shift in thinking has also made it so that the average young person will expect to carve out 15 careers in their lifetime as opposed to the older generation with maybe 1 or 2. Is this a combination of Covid, the generational shift, lack of forward thinking or is it a sign of the times and what can we do to ensure that we recruit good staff and retain them. The new blood that is coming into the profession will be the business leaders of the future, so how can we nurture and train them to be that forward thinking professional?

Some of the businesses are happy with their recruitment and retention and they put it down to the fact that they are known as a ‘good’ company to train with and progress. The issues they face are the challenges on specialisms especially around payroll and tax. These succession problems are faced by many and can be down to the fact that people will move from practice to industry. Industry can offer larger financial packages and better benefits than those in practice, so people leave the practice firm once trained and once again the recruitment piece begins again. 

Another thoughtful insight was – have the senior partners in firms lost touch with what the younger generation want from their employment? Many of the people today had young teams and the benefits packages that seemed important to them were around mental health, well-being hours and referral bonus’. Young people weren’t interested in the pension schemes and the work life balance – if anything the work life balance swayed more to life than work! 

The core theme seemed to concentrate on apprenticeships and the importance of that support from the partners. Investment in teams was apparent and they discussed how there would be no business without a team. A huge piece of work undertaken by one member was an anonymous survey that asked the team – ‘What do you want?’ An ingenious idea that might pave the way for some radical ideas that could be implemented. The business wanted to know what they were “missing”, how could they keep their star employees. First intuition CEO, Gareth John, mentioned that a senior partner at one of the big 4 had done something similar and the results were interesting – 1. They loved their job. 2. They were proud to work there. 3, They were still going to leave in 12 months. What is it that makes those people move on? What are we missing?

Ultimately, the current generation want paying for a job that they are doing now. They don’t want the carrot to be dangled in front of them saying ‘look where you can be in 10 years’. They want it now, is it impatience or are they really ambitious? 

Another fact that was super important raised by Gareth was, the average length of time spent in a role for a 20 year old is now 2.4 years. This wouldn’t even see them to the end of the Level 7 apprenticeship – so it seems that the shift in recruiting is going to a challenge for a while, if not forever. The open forum of LinkedIn for recruiters and even other businesses allows young people to be in the shop window, opening avenues for discussion, even if they weren’t looking for their next role. Is social media to blame for the shift? Do we need to start thinking way outside the box?

For the smaller, younger firms – the struggle is real when it comes to retention. The larger firms have the money to throw at the new recruits, offering to clear the penalties for moving to a new company. There isn’t the incentive to stay for fear of moving lands you with a training bill. This will now be covered by the new firm, along with the promise of more money and bigger benefits. The industry is now struggling to recruit at all levels and demand is increasing, this means a lot more money for less work? Are the younger generation just more clued up on the world of work and what is happening out there, that they are holding out for as much as they can get? Lots of different discussions, surveys, roundtables, conferences etc have all discussed that point and I think there is a need to get the young people in to tell us what they want! All teams and members of the team are different. They all are motivated by different things – do we need to individualise things?

One other point that was mentioned was around Post-Covid and the decline in the work ethic. Pre-Covid, people might stay that extra 15 minutes to help out in busy periods, now – 5pm on the dot and people are out of the door whether work is completed or not! We need to find that right balance or work, study and life. As said previously the shift is more to the personal and I think this is a larger piece of work. People don’t want to study on a weekend – even though the succeed in their exams would be beneficial to them?

To conclude, every business in the industry is facing the same or similar concerns. Investment in teams is crucial and some more around social skills, communication and problem solving in the first instance would be useful to new recruits. Simple lessons around how to work emails and even answer a phone would be useful – it would inspire confidence and generate a need to do better. Can we solve the industry problems ourselves? In short, no. But we will go a long way to ensure we support our local businesses by implementing what they see as important. 

Furthermore, another piece of work with the new apprentices in the businesses might be beneficial. This way we could understand what it is they are moving on for, what drives their ambitions?

Let us know your thought on this at bd.yorkshire@fi.co.uk