StoneTurn’s Brad Wilson wrote an opinion piece for Bloomberg Tax about how business leaders can take proactive steps to address the accountant shortage and I am presenting it here for you to critique. According to Glassdoor, StoneTurn is a global professional services firm that works with law firms, corporations, and government agencies in solving the most complex and consequential business issues.
Brad is coming into this from the business leader side, not the accounting firm side. As the largest employers of accounting graduates by far, it’s the firms people talk about most when they talk about raising pay and lowering hours so it’s nice to get a different perspective from another side of the profession.
His TLDR: “As business leaders, we can change the narrative on accounting from a procedural, ‘must have’ function to a dynamic, value-adding operation that is attractive for new talent to find professionally fulfilling. Leaders can take several steps to help chart a path forward.”
Cool. Right. Let’s see your steps, Brad.
Number one:
See accounting and audit as less of an overhead cost center and more as a partner in the business’s overall health and growth. For more than a year, several companies have been listing the accountant shortage as a material weakness in their internal control over financial reporting, indicating that a material misstatement could occur as a result.
Organizations should dedicate additional resources and focus to securing their accounting talent as they would to securing their revenue-generating talent.
If businesses could get away with using ChatGPT for all their accounting needs, they would. Countless people who don’t know what accountants do are convinced accountants will be as obsolete as cobblers, telephone operators, and accounting bloggers within the next five or ten years thanks to AI. Here’s a good Threads thread about why those people are dumb.
Keeper proudly debuted its Ask an AI Accountant GPT-4 tool last year and it’s scary good at answering specific tax questions when the asker knows what they’re supposed to be asking. Like all current day AI tools, it sometimes pulls things out of its ass.
For now, accountants more than justify their line items on the payroll. It’s just that their employers don’t get that. If the AI were good enough, they’d replace you all tomorrow. For now, paying poverty wages to people halfway across the world will have to do.
Alright, that’s depressing. Hopefully number two is better:
Invest in accounting teams through training and other upskilling programs. As with any profession, the classroom only takes experience so far. Helping individuals upskill can have broader organizational benefits.
He mentions mentoring programs, companies paying for continuing education (um, they better), basic and advanced upskilling, all that good stuff. Great. Do that. Pay for advanced degrees, too.
Number three:
Create closer relationships between accountants and students. Developing talent begins with education about the various career opportunities an accounting degree or CPA can provide. Such education could also be an opportunity to diversify the accounting or CPA pipeline.
Firms and the various bodies working hard to address the accountant shortage in any way that doesn’t involve paying people a ton more money are big on this one. So they’re sending CPAs into schools to talk about their career (and throw candy at the students). By all means, go for it and get in those schools. Read this first before you do, please: Want to Do Your Part to Help the Accountant Shortage? Here’s What You Can Do Right Now
Number four:
Consider how technology can help responsibly ease the burden of administrative or data-centric tasks, and provide a reprieve in the talent shortage. Technology has changed the way we work, and the accounting profession should continue to evolve. Consider what tools can help with the “first run” of mundane or repetitive tasks, freeing up time for more elevated or nuanced tasks.
I wonder how many people quit EY mostly because of having to interact with Mercury?
Last one:
Establish tone at the top within the function and in the organization to instill best practices and gravity of the function’s purpose. As leaders, we can create programs and policies, but exemplifying the words on paper through our actions will drive results.
Leaders should consider how their actions contribute to the future of the profession. This could means evangelizing on behalf of the profession, explaining complex scenarios, demonstrating thoroughness in day-to-day activities, or helping troubleshoot emerging issues. Teams will remember our actions as they grow in their own careers. As leaders, most of us can likely cite the long-term impact a mentor’s actions have had on our own career growth or journey.
He wraps up:
Failure to safeguard the talent pipeline for accounting can have ripple effects in the business world at large. By demonstrating the value of accounting and auditing to rising professionals, business leaders can attract qualified talent to the accounting field, restoring a profession that would benefit from a boost.
Related, I guess: Job Security Isn’t Enough to Keep Many Accountants From Quitting [WSJ]
It’s not a mystery. People have left the industry for the same reason for at least 50 years. Long hours, too much stress, compensation that isn’t worth putting up with the hours and stress. Young people spend more time getting the degree than working in the field and now most of these firms only want to hire you seasonally. I told my daughter not to go into this field. I fly solo now but if you want to attract young people fix this!
There is no shortage, companies need to pay more for skilled labor. Fake news by 1%
Umm .. there IS a shortage, in part because employers don’t want to pay more. How is that fake?
See here’s the thing. We’ve known about this “shortage” for quite some time now, and multiple companies and individuals have asked the populations why they aren’t going into accounting. They’ve given us their answer, but as an industry we haven’t done anything to change it. Sure, we can point out what attracted us and why we went into it and the benefits, but as the old saying goes “I’m not buying what you’re selling”.
We have a stalemate… Nothing is going to change unless 1) people start to seek PA’s benefits again (more abundantly, anyway), 2) the business side of PA changes… which isn’t unheard of, but also hasn’t been done in decades.
Personally, I would argue nothing is really wrong with the way things are, because neither “side” wants to do anything about it.