Think your firm is meeting the needs of your younger staff? In the words of rapper Ice Cube, you might want to "check yourself before you wreck yourself" with that assumption. A new white paper, "Recruiting and Keeping Up-and-coming CPAs at Your Firm," released by CCH, found that firms could actually be doing better. A lot better.
The survey included telephone interviews with 150 CPAs with four to seven years of experience in a U.S. firm and examined the benefits, tools, technology and culture that this demographic wants most.
This population was specifically selected for their solid base of experience and their eagerness to move into the more challenging positions that are being vacated as Baby Boomers begin to retire and are being created as new demands on the profession develop, according to the report.
Four areas were explored in this survey – firm infrastructure, firm culture, benefits and compensation and professional training and development. In the area of firm infrastructure, 67 percent of respondents said comprehensive resources to get the job done was of high importance. Yet only 39 percent of the CPAs surveyed highly rated their firm's ability in this area.
Within the area of firm culture, only 38 percent of firms received a very good rating on their work/life balance programs by their younger staff, and even worse was their ability to give high quality feedback. Only 13 percent of CPAs said their firms did a very good job at this.
With an anticipated 18 to 26 percent growth rate through 2014 for accounting professionals, firms might want to consider upping their game.
For a look at how the other areas fared and more results, download the white paper
And if you want to see the video to Ice Cube's wise words, you can check it out
