Accounting Today - August 16 2010

Hanging onto high potentials
tomorrow’snews

If you’re a regular reader of my “Ask Re- becca” feature on the Accounting Tomor- row blog, you may have seen this inquiry I recently received from a concerned partner: “As the economy in our area (Houston) starts to pick up, my partners and I are wondering whether our high-potential employees will stay with us, or whether they’re going to

Hint: Involve them in your firm’s long-term projects

BY REBECCA RYAN

about best practices to keep our top talent happy and on track. (Disclaimer: I speak on best practices in human capital frequently.) But the dirty little secret is that while these best practices can spark ideas for your firm, they cannot be transported from firm to firm and have the same efficacy everywhere.

Just like one chemotherapy drug can completely arrest the spread of cancer in one patient and do nothing in another, best practices in employee engagement are unpredictable when administered across a range of firms.

Dustin Hostetler, a Black Belt in process
improvement who works for Lean CPA (a di-
ing system,” or “We need to do a focus group.”
Both are impartial — or flawed — methods.
If you want to hang onto top talent, you must
engage them in the discussion and the design
of solutions they’ll inherit. Hostetler speaks
from experience helping firms implement
lean practices: “The only way to address and
understand core issues in your firm is to use
a cross-functional team from different areas
in your practice — the people who walk the
walk every day.”

leave. We know they’re getting offers — one is gone already — but we want to do everything we can to hang onto them. What can we do to make sure our high potentials stay with us, and don’t take another offer?” It was signed, Will They Love Me or Leave Me?

You can read my response to “Will’s” question at the Accounting Tomorrow blog (www. webcpa.com/acto_blog/-54875-1.html). Here, I’ll expand on my response, and outline a tried-and-true method of engagement that firms of any size or configuration can use to hang onto their top talent: involving them in process improvements that will have long-term impacts on the firm.

WHY ‘BEST PRACTICES’ FAIL

We all go to conferences where we learn

Rebecca Ryan is a consultant who helps firms develop and keep their top talent. Reach her at (888) 922-9596 ext. 702 or rr@nextgenerationconsulting.com.

vision of Rea & Associates Inc., in New Phila-
delphia, Ohio) puts it this way: “What works
optimally for one firm does not automatically
work perfectly in another.”
There are other reasons “best practices” in
employee retention have a high rate of fail-
ure. The two most obvious are:

Blind spots. Firm leaders and HR professionals often can’t see or don’t understand what really matters to top talent. Case in point: The American Institute of CPAs’ PCPS “Top Talent Survey” revealed that partners believe the top retention tool for high potentials is compensation. When high potentials were asked what was most important to them, development opportunities were listed first. Compensation was listed fourth.

Lack of participation from top talent in designing or redesigning the new approach. To save time and money, many firms throw consultants or technology (or both) at problems like hanging onto top talent. Leaders think, “We just need a better track-

ENGAGE THEM IN THE FUTURE

There have been powerful results in firms that have unleashed cross-functional teams to solve firm problems. Whether the challenge was designing a business strategy to pursue a new niche, streamlining workflow, or developing a process to keep top talent, the most powerful results occurred when firms followed these simple guidelines:

1. Use a cross-functional team of employees who can bring diverse talent and ideas to the table. Make sure all of your high potentials have opportunities to serve on these teams, but don’t limit it to high potentials only. If you need the buy-in from admins in the firm, engage them, too!

2. Use an objective, outside facilitator to help the team stay on task, work through any stumbling blocks, and summarize the team’s progress and decisions.

3. Put internal and external clients in the center of the process. Any recommendation that comes from a cross-functional team must have 100 percent buy-in and satisfaction from internal clients — e.g., the next person who touches the tax return. You can’t have 100 percent external client satisfaction if your people don’t have the process you’ve asked them to follow.

Asking your high-potential talent to work on issues critical to the future of the firm has several benefits. For partners, it removes a lot of project work from their plates, and delegates issues to a more diverse group of thinkers in the firm. For top talent, it gives them a deeper stake in the firm, and helps them see themselves as future firm leaders.

In the words of one young partner at Crowe Horwath, in Elm Brook, Ill., “If I hadn’t been involved in a process like this, I don’t know if I would’ve stayed. It was so engaging. I was so into it. I figured, ‘If they trust me with this, maybe they really do believe in me.’” AT

Did you know that workers at the Internal Revenue Service can accrue four hours of vacation time every two weeks — even when they are on sick leave?

It’s true — and you know how I know? The IRS has posted video testimonials on You Tube of what particular jobs are like at the government agency. Through a playlist called, “Working at the IRS,” viewers can hear what’s it like to be an international examiner, a revenue agent, a contact representative and a special agent in criminal investigation, in “day in the life” video glimpses of those who are already in those positions.

Also on the IRS You Tube channel (sounds kind of like an oxymoron, doesn’t it?) are other videos addressing tax tips for individuals and businesses, information about new credits, deductions and changes in tax law, and even videos in American Sign Language and Spanish. There’s also a new and improved IRS Careers Web site ( www.jobs.irs.gov/ home.html) that tries to address the needs of those headed to college, those out of college ready to start their career, those looking to make a career move, and the part-timer.

Who knew the IRS could be kind of … cool?

Anyway, moving on — in other Accounting Tomorrow news, Jon Barnett, a staff member at Carr, Riggs & Ingram in Jackson, Miss., not only passed the CPA Exam in one sitting, he achieved the highest grade on the 2009 test — earning him statewide recognition. As a result, Barnett, who works on the firm’s audit team, has been awarded the Fred T. Neely Gold Medal Award by the Mississippi Society of CPAs. He was honored during the business meeting of the MSCPA’s annual convention. Congrats, Jon!