Have you heard the term “the great resignation” floating around recently? You most likely have. You may even be helping your clients juggle job losses, labour shortages and loss of skilled workers. But sometimes your dedication to looking out for your small business clients can distract you from looking at your own firm and how these economic trends impact you.
We recently surveyed 500 accountants across the UK to find out exactly how they're feeling this year. We found that one third of accountants see high turnover of staff as the biggest challenge in their role.
Here's a short article to help you better understand the Great Resignation and three handy top tips to help you look after and retain your team.
What's the Great Resignation?
New research has revealed that a significant amount of UK workers are reconsidering what’s most important to them. Carefully looking into different job opportunities that may offer more benefits to them. In fact, a survey of 1,000 UK workers revealed that almost a third of UK workers are considering moving to a new job this year. With “the great resignation” showing no sign of slowing down.
Harvard Business Review believes this is due to five factors: retirement, relocation, reconsideration, re-shuffling and reluctance. With the main themes being workers are “retiring in greater numbers but aren’t relocating in large numbers; they’re reconsidering their work-life balance and care roles; they’re making localized switches among industries or reshuffling and demonstrating a reluctance to return to in-person jobs”.
Research from IRIS also found that 49% of UK accountancy firms are facing “huge blows” to growth, with 74% saying they were “feeling the strain” from lack of skilled workers.
High turnover can hugely hinder the success of your firm. Primarily it can harm your ability to connect with your clients and offer more services. Your employee’s resigning can often be out of your control, but there are actions you can take to minimise the risk.
With recruitment and retention becoming one of the biggest obstacles to success in 2022, check out these 5 top tips to become “THE” accountancy firm to work for.
How to manage the great resignation and enhance your staff satisfaction
1. Healthy people, healthy business
Checking in with your team regularly can be a great place to start to ensure your team is feeling well-looked after. Book in regular one-to-ones with everyone in your team, ensuring everyone has a dedicated time. This can offer them time to discuss their pain points and workload so they feel more recognised and empowered. People Matter states “effective two-way communication is the heart of employee retention.”
As a leader, you’ll be able to spot problems impacting their productivity and happiness at work. Helping you to better assist, advise or manage issues.
Go a step further and implement fun and unique benefits which make your employees feel appreciated. Examples include activities such as team lunches. Not only can this help team morale, but also shows your gratitude towards your staff. Check out this article on budget-friendly employee benefits you can introduce today.
Top tip: use your one-to-one meetings to find out the exact benefits your employees value.
2. Focus on training and mentoring
With employees increasingly looking around for the best job opportunities to grow and develop, focusing on employee career progression and good training is imperative.
In fact, research shows that staff leave when they stop learning and advancing. Offering progression models and career development is crucial to inspire your employees and keep them seeing personal value in the work they do.
At Capitalise, we offer CPD accredited training via our Learn programme. Learn gives everyone in your firm free access to our CPD-certified online learning. Giving you new accredited courses to offer your workforce to help them continue their development and long-term success.
With research showing 32% of UK accountancy firms see the current skill set in their firm as a barrier to growth in the next 12 months, use these training courses to inspire and revitalise your workforce.
Top tip: talk to your employees about their career goals for the future and see if you can help them achieve these.
3. Give your employees the tools they need
Find out what your employees enjoy doing and what sparks their motivation in the accountancy space. Then go further and ensure they have the tools they need to do these tasks.
Accountants often want tools which make them more efficient and remove the burden of manual work.
Offering your staff tools which open the doors to more fulfilling work is incredibly powerful. Examples include moving to cloud accounting software and introducing automated platforms which allows them more time to do work they find fulfilling.
Our Monitor platform uses cloud technology and accounting software, so that your team can connect client data to generate reports and insights - letting them talk to their clients proactively and intuitively. Our Capital Reports feature that lives inside Monitor, offers your team credit profiles that help them unpack credit ratings and risk factors for each client.
These tools help provide your staff with confidence to open up new, deeper relationships with clients and encourage more purposeful work.
Top tip: find out what work excites your workers and introduce them to new tools which open the doors to these.
Building a bullet-proof accountancy firm
A massive part of building out an attractive accountancy firm is a willingness to adapt. Being flexible to change your working business model to suit the needs of employees. With this attitude, you're already ahead of the game in becoming an accountancy firm which retains and attracts new and existing skilled staff.
Take a look at the full “Firms of the Future” research report highlighting just how accountants are feeling this 2022.
