What keeps employees engaged is changing rapidly, and accounting firms can’t afford to fall behind, according to Tina Wang, division vice president of HR at payroll and HR giant ADP, and Darren Root, a major thought leader in the profession and Co-founder of Better Every Day.

Transcription:

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Dan Hood (00:03):

Welcome to On the Air with Accounting. Today, I’m editor-in-chief Dan Hood. We focus a lot on bringing new people into the accounting profession, but keeping them there once they’re in is just as important, and that means the firms need to focus strongly on employee engagement. That’s a bit of a moving target these days, however, and keeping up with what keeps staff on board is crucial. So we’re here to talk about all that is Tina Wang, she’s the division vice president of HR at payroll and HR giant ADP. Tina, thanks for joining us.

Tina Wang (00:27):

Thanks for having me.

Dan Hood (00:29):

We’ve also got Darren Root, who’s a thought leader in the profession and co-founder of Better Every Day. Darren, thanks for joining us.

Darren Root (00:35):

Thanks, Dan. I appreciate it.

Dan Hood (00:38):

I wanted to start off by asking about what engages employees is changing. I mentioned it’s a moving target. For a while it seemed like every new generation came in, had a different set of things that engaged them and that they cared about, and now it seems like it’s every day it’s changing. Tina, maybe you could guide us through some of these changes, what you’re seeing as the things that engage employees now.

Tina Wang (00:59):

Sure. I would tell you that one of the things, there’s a few things that we’re actually starting to see. One was it used to be a little bit more about base salary. Now what we’re seeing is base salary plus benefits, so that total benefits package is really important. The second thing is people are looking for more job security, which includes career progression. They want to grow their career in the organization that they join, and then the third is flexibility, and that really is a result of the pandemic in which people want to be able to have the opportunity to work and also balance some of their personal commitments.

Dan Hood (01:34):

Gotcha. Darren, is this, and I know we’re bringing a lot of different perspectives. Obviously a DP works with pretty much every employer in the country and every industry and so on. Does this resonate for you in terms of accounting?

Darren Root (01:46):

It does, Dan. My take is most firms are small firms. As you well know, the concept of upward mobility and all that stuff, oftentimes there’s not a lot of room to go, but I’m finding that employees want to own something inside the firm, whether that’s customer experience or technology or whatever that is. It may not be significant upward mobility, but it’s just more responsibility, more ownership, and really understanding why the firm’s doing what they’re doing. That’s what I see in addition to what Tina said.

Tina Wang (02:29):

And if I could add actually that one of the things that’s traditionally, it’s always been that upward ladder movement, but if you think about career movement today, it’s really about that lattice move, right? Taking some steps sideways and then upwards or maybe backwards to learn a different skillset. So definitely see that as it relates to somebody’s career growth,

Dan Hood (02:47):

Right? And that’s something we see a little bit in some, I think in certain forward thinking firms, you see that movement from side to side, particularly in helping young accountants plan their careers getting exposure. If you’re a large enough firm and you have enough service offerings or enough areas, giving them some exposure to different areas of accounting where they can figure out, Hey, but I started in tax, but is that really where I want to end up? Do I want to look at assurance and see what that’s like or try one of the new service offerings that’s coming around? Do I want to look at our cast department or our tech services? That sort of thing. Yeah, absolutely. Right. It’s not just, as you say, it’s not just a straight ladder up and down, it’s a lattice, which who thought we’d be talking about lattice?

(03:24):

I thought they would be removed at the end of the 20th century as outdated technology, but suddenly they’re the metaphor of the day. I do want to talk a little bit about, we talked about particularly younger employees. I want to talk a little bit more about that because as I said, there’s this difference a little bit between getting people in the door and then keeping them as long as you’re assuming you’re not just locking the door once they get in, if there are different ways to engage entry level employees or younger employees versus those who are a little bit further along in their careers. I know Tina, if you want jump in on that one and then we’ll bring in Darren to round us out.

Tina Wang (03:58):

Entry level, I’ll say first entrance into the workplace is always so fun and exciting in terms of somebody starting their career and in terms of attracting them, obviously I already mentioned a little bit about that total benefit package and that benefits is not just benefit offerings as it relates to traditional medical, dental, vision type of thing, but it’s also things like learning and development opportunities as well. There’s part of that that helps in terms of growing their skillset and understanding what that looks like as well as for the organization to provide feedback to give them guidance. New workers tend to need a little bit more of that, I’ll say day-to-day conversation just because they’re still learning what’s a regulation versus what’s a guideline or what the process to follow. So some of that changes differently from somebody who’s a more experienced worker who doesn’t need as much of that, but still needs that ongoing contact and what Darren said, the purpose, right? Feeling valued in the organization as well as getting feedback in terms of what they can continue doing better or learning more of.

Darren Root (05:08):

Excellent.

Dan Hood (05:09):

Darren, did you want to jump in

Darren Root (05:11):

My head? Dan, as you know, it usually goes to small accounting firms and one, it’s usually kind of tough for them to hire fresh people out of school. Usually somebody’s coming 2, 3, 4 years out of a much larger firm, and I think what they like is the engagement that they get early on with clients and customers and the ability to interact to me, giving them responsibility to Tina’s point, that training track on how to interact with clients because oftentimes they haven’t got a lot of that. They didn’t receive a lot of that in the larger firms. So I think that sort of helps them feel more important like they’re contributing more to the cause. So that’s the only I would add.

Dan Hood (05:58):

Yeah, well that makes sense. I mean, one of the things, again, we see a lot from pioneering firms that are really at the top firms, for instance, that are top of our best firms to work for list. It’s fairly common among that group, but I don’t think it’s common as it should be among the other 44,900 firms in that profession to do things like giving younger employees more responsibility in some form or another. Sometimes it’s on a firm committee, even if it’s the fund committee, the party committee, but sometimes it’s launching a new service area or doing some proper, actually valuable work for the firm, but they’re in charge of it. And the notion of pushing that opportunity to be in charge of something and to be responsible for something and to really feel like you’re contributing in a major way at a much earlier point in your career seems to be a thing, as I said, that advanced firms are doing on a regular basis that might really spread to the benefit of all the smaller firms.

Darren Root (06:54):

The thing I would probably add to that a little bit, Dan, is just when you hire somebody new, especially a younger person that’s new, you have an opportunity to have a fresh set of eyes on things you’ve been doing the same way for so long, whether that’s customer experience or friction in the process. So taking that feedback from newer employees I think can be invaluable for the firm.

Dan Hood (07:21):

Well, it’s interesting. I talked a little bit about or mentioned generational differences. Anecdotally, one hears that newer generations, I expect to be heard. I expect to be able to say, you have nobus about saying, well, this is dumb, this is a bad way to do it. Why are you doing it this way? There’s software that does it better or you just don’t need to do it at all. And it’s fascinating to see that because in accounting, I think Darren, tell me if I’m wrong on this, but the long-term understanding has been that you didn’t do that in accounting, at least for many generations. You did what you were told and you kept your head down. You didn’t look at a process and go, what? This is crazy.

Darren Root (07:56):

Sally was always the word of the day, which was same as last year. And they just Exactly. And even today they just continue to do that,

Dan Hood (08:03):

Right? And last year in most cases, he’s like 19 34, 19 35. So I do want to, it’s interesting because we’re talking about what firms can do and the things they need to be offering. I want to take it down another level to talk about managers and how people are actually managing staff on a day-to-day basis. Jared, you talked a little bit about right, that how for a lot of smaller firms, they’re bringing on people who have some experience at a larger firm, often a big four, but sometimes one of the other mega regionals or other large national firms. So there’s more and more of those every day. What does a management look like? How is that changing on a day-to-day basis for an accounting firm manager at a smaller firm? What do they need to be thinking about when they’re dealing with their employees on a day-to-day basis?

Darren Root (08:51):

I did a different podcast the other day with Mitchell Dan and actually had his mom on there who’s really a mental health expert. So,

Dan Hood (09:03):

Oh mom, sorry, I think, but

Darren Root (09:06):

We spent time really talking about just staying in tune with your employee’s mental health. And I think as you become a manager, I think you have to become more in tune with what leadership means and building those relationships and trying to understand the mental health of your team and doing the best you can to keep that healthy inside the firm.

Dan Hood (09:34):

Well, it’s become the last five to six years, it’s been so fraught between Covid and now between intense, there’s such a huge capacity crunch that we hear most firms are way overworked and their staff are way overworked. And so as you say that mental health monitoring and just paying attention to it has got to be a huge part. Otherwise you’re going to burn your staff out and they have options. They can go other places. Anybody who’s skilled in accounting, anybody you want to can find some other place that will pay attention to exactly those kinds of things.

Tina Wang (10:06):

I was just going to say, I think about the change. If you think about 20 years ago, 15 years ago, it was more about the work that it may have been about checking how they’re doing, how are you feeling? Are you feeling overwhelmed or overworked? And so now it’s a little bit more of a balance of connecting with the individual to make sure that they aren’t burning out

Dan Hood (10:30):

And that for accounting, it’s a revolution. But sorry, Derek, you were going to join in?

Darren Root (10:37):

I was just going to pile on Tina. That’s what I was going to say a minute ago, Tina, I think my dad practiced before me and even early in my career, the concept was sucking up. And that’s not always the best answer today if you want to engage your team and be a good leader. So I think just being in touch with the concept that there is this thing called mental health and understanding it’s a thing. I think it would be really helpful for accounting professionals

Dan Hood (11:10):

On a very practical level, right? People can’t perform at their best if they are suffering from anxiety, suffering from burnout, overwork, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I know you both mentioned feedback earlier on. Obviously that’s an important thing in a lot of people at all ages. I mean, there’s a serve a stereotype of younger generations needing feedback on a daily basis, but everybody likes to know what they’re doing and how they’re doing and how they’re performing. And the accounting profession for a long time wasn’t great at it, but they’re getting better. I think they can get much better going on. Are there any other changes in management style that the firms should be looking at or anything they should be thinking about literally on a personal day-to-day basis? We talked about feedback, we talked about mental health, anything else?

Darren Root (11:52):

My take is to, most people are just not. I mean, some people are maybe natural born leaders, but this is a skill that you can learn. So again, in most small firms, we don’t invest a lot in education or outside resources or training. And I think this is a skill that needs to be taught and an opportunity for your team to learn.

Dan Hood (12:21):

Well, it’s certainly true that for a long time management, and this is true not just of accounting, but I think of a lot of most industries, management is something that was never taught. It was said you were good at doing certain work, so they made you manage people who were doing that work. And very rarely did they give you any sort of training in what management meant. And I mean, Tina, you may have a better view of, is that a fairly safe assumption to talk about for Industrywide, that management isn’t a skill that people are being taught and that they need to be,

Tina Wang (12:47):

I think it historically leader? Well, we put when we, I’ll say promote our people management, they tend to be subject matter experts versus actually having some of that leadership skill. And that’s shifting in terms of some of the qualitative pieces as well. So if you think about, and Darren, if I go back to the small businesses, small business owners and wear so many different hats, it’s not a single function that they’re responsible for. And so now it’s about balancing and remembering it’s not just about the work anymore, but it’s also about the person and the individual. And so I would add that it’s also asking and listening a little bit differently than telling and just doing.

Dan Hood (13:26):

Right. Well, and that goes to what we were talking about, about the value that different perspectives can bring in. It’s worth listening to ’em, not just because it’ll make them feel included, so on, but because they have good ideas and fresh perspectives that may make it easier to do work. And we’re always only lookout for that in an area, in an era of overwork and under capacity. There’s a lot more to talk about this than we’re going to talk about. Some of it, we won’t get to all of it because we don’t have days and days and days of time, but we’re getting into some more aspects of this that I think are particularly relevant to accounting firms. But first we have to take a quick break.

(14:06):

Alright, and we’re back and we’re talking with Tina Wang and Darren Root about employee engagement and how firms need to change what they’re doing to make sure that they can keep the staff that they’re bringing on if they could find the staff to bring on in the first place. But that’s a totally different podcast. Let’s assume you’ve hired them, you’ve brought them on board. We talked a little bit about the career ladder versus the career latice and the need to pay attention to firms, to employees, career progression. I want to talk a little bit more about that, Terry, in terms of what role you think firms should be playing in managing their employees careers

Darren Root (14:39):

In managing their careers. You mean Dan, their upward mobility versus their,

Dan Hood (14:45):

I would say from whatever perspective is shifting and changing, I think that’s a part of it. Laying out, for instance, we’re seeing smart firms laying out a career path for staff in the sense of telling ’em, Hey, if you want to advance, these are the roles, these are the skills you’ll need. This is what will involve, this will be the rewards. And they’re being much clearer about that than firms have been in the past. They’re also helping the staff get the skills they need to develop those sorts of things. But there are, as you see, there are a lot of other different ways in terms of managing their career, exposing them to other areas of the firm. For instance, we talked about that a little earlier, but sort of any area in terms of managing an employee’s career that you think firms should be getting involved?

Darren Root (15:22):

I think firms should look beyond the traditional career path, which was staff, person, manager, partner sort of path and with some technical skill along that journey, whether it’s audit, accounting, payroll or tax or whatever it is to look at the firm more broadly and look at the concepts of customer experience as an opportunity to own, or maybe it’s creating a great culture inside the firm. Or another one might be managing or leading the technology or AI journey that the firm’s going to take. So instead of those traditional, Hey, we’re going to put you on this career path and you’re going to become a better tax person over the next 15 years, all of a, I mean, you can engage people at a much earlier stage and let them own things that they’re passionate about. That is beyond the technical skillset sets that a firm may offer,

Dan Hood (16:20):

Which is great because among another things, it multiplies the opportunities for that. If you’re not thinking just here are the roles in tax and audit and our other departments, the traditional roles, if you add all these other roles, that gives you a lot more scope for giving people those ownership opportunities and those leadership opportunities. It makes a lot of sense and it also opens people up to the sense of a career path and accounting can be a lot of different things, which it can. We talked a little bit about just briefly, the responsibility of firms to help people understand the shape of their careers. It was for a long time a pretty straightforward thing. As you said, it was the career ladder and you wit hub. Do you think firms should be going out of the way to explain an accounting career to staff in the sense of saying, Hey, these are all the things you can do. Some of them involve working at other places than us and maybe coming back later or something like that. Is that something, or put it this way, are employees getting that? Are the employees learning the fact that they really can build an amazing career with a bunch of off the shelf sort of stuff, but they have to be proactive about it?

Darren Root (17:25):

My take is they’re not getting it from small businesses and part of that, and Tina can speak much better to this than I can, but part of that I think is small business owners, generally speaking, are not great leaders to start with either. I mean, they probably had a technical skillset and that helped them create a business, whether it’s accounting or something else. And so they’re probably lacking little bit in that leadership area, and so it just sort of compounds on itself. Tina, I’d love to get your take on that.

Tina Wang (18:00):

Yeah, I would say it’s interesting. My view is that the careers are only jointly between the organization and the individual. Because if you think about, you ever want to say your career path in someone else’s hands to owe completely, because then you may never get to where you want to be. But at the same time, if the organization wants to keep you, it’s about what they can offer at the same time. So I would say one is the organization or the small business owner or the manager or the leader, whoever that happens to be, should at least have the conversation, not just once, multiple times over time period to talk about, Hey Darren, what is it that you really want to do? What do you want to learn so that you can match those opportunities and those experiences, whether it’s culture, whether it’s client experience, whatever that happens to be, to give them that opportunity to grow.

(18:53):

And at the same time, you can show them what their career is. It doesn’t have to be upwards. It could be again, that sideways or lattice to show what they value and purpose they serve in the organization, in the firm, whatever it happens to be. I do think I probably agree with Darren. I don’t think small businesses are fully equipped all the time to have like, Hey, here are all the opportunities we have to offer you. But there is that opportunity just to have a conversation. So at least what is somebody’s ambition? What if somebody happens to be in a time period in time that they just want to, they’re happy and they’re not looking to go anywhere. So understanding, I’ll say meet them where they are a bit, that individual helps a lot.

Darren Root (19:40):

So don’t you guys think that there’s, I mean, creating an opportunity to get feedback I think is super important for accounting firms, small businesses, just that opportunity to meet with somebody, whether that’s the partner or ahead of you or the owner of the business, having that opportunity to meet with them on some regular basis, whether that’s monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, and asking those questions like one maybe how are you doing? And where do you want to be six months from now, 12 months from now? Just asking those questions and getting the conversation going. Most firm owners that I see Dan are just not even asking. They’re not creating the framework to get that information.

Dan Hood (20:27):

Well, they are like small business owners everywhere and to give them their due, they’re crazy busy. But that said, these conversations need to go away and have a three day retreat to take 20 minutes to talk to somebody about what they want from their career and what they hope to achieve. And this ties into a question I wanted to dive into a little more, which is obviously larger firms and larger businesses have all kinds of resources, large HR departments and so on, to the resources to do a lot more for their employees to literally spend money on engagement. I don’t mean to cheapen that it’s all valuable stuff, but yeah, if you can buy pet insurance for all your employees who have pets, that’s a great engagement tool for people who really love their pets. Small firms aren’t going to be able to do that.

(21:17):

Small businesses can’t do that. We’ve talked, but I think we’ve given some hints of things that small business can do. They can care. Caring doesn’t cost anything except a little bit of time. The conversations, the feedback you can bring are things that firm owners at any size or managers at any size can do. But again, I think that you come back to, they probably didn’t start a small business to be that kind of expert, to be that kind of person who could talk to staff. So maybe we could talk a little bit more about things that smaller businesses can do in terms of engagement, things like that, like listening to employees, taking the time to care about where they want to go and what they want to do and how they’re doing at the firm and what kind of feedback they’re looking for. Are there things beyond that smaller businesses could do? Tina, I don’t know if you see this across all the businesses that a DP works with.

Tina Wang (22:06):

Each authorization has their own culture in terms of what they feel is valuable. So as an example, during a busy season, are they providing dinner, are they providing lunch? Things like that that show a care for the individual. Are there opportunities that if they do have, I’ll say a hybrid schedule or not during the rest of the year, but in office, are you more flexible on the other side? I’ll even say this is even small for nursing mothers. Is there a room that you’re offering for them to have privacy to be able to do what they need to do? Those little small things, community events, all of those things actually create the culture for any small organization and to give the employee something to connect with as well.

Dan Hood (22:55):

Darren, I dunno if you want to jump in on this one as well.

Darren Root (22:57):

I think that small businesses have potentially an advantage because they can create a vision, they can articulate that vision to a small number of people and they can have a shared vision as they move forward. And I think that’s really important that people be connected to the vision or the why of the organization. I think it’s a lot harder being in small organizations and being a larger organization now. It’s much harder for a larger organization to articulate that vision and share that with everybody and to keep everybody connected to that vision. So I think it can be a real asset for small businesses and small firms in particular to create that vision and to share that and keep people on the same page

Dan Hood (23:45):

In large businesses, that culture often becomes a game of telephone where the leaders of the firm say, yes, we care about this. And by the time it gets down to the employee level, they don’t care about that anymore. But yeah, just say if you’re a relatively small firm, it’s easy to say, no, this is what I mean, or this is what we mean when we say this is our culture. Just say it’s a lot easier to spread a culture among a small group of people than it is when you’re in multiple offices all across the country, et cetera, et cetera. This is great, but we’re running up against time, as I said, there’s not enough time to talk about all these things that we wish there were. I would like to just as a final takeaway, talk about changes that we expect coming forward. Team. I know if there, as you look forward across the workforce, are there changes you expect to see coming and how companies want to engage employees?

Tina Wang (24:37):

I don’t have a crystal ball, so I really don’t know if I have anything. I would say a guarantee. But I do think that the world of work is changing super fast and it’s going to be really important to continue to stay connected to your employees regardless whether you’re a large company or a small company. And technology is going to play a piece of this. And so anything that an organization can do from, again, keeping your connection to the employees and leveraging data in terms of driving decisions, all of that is going to be really important as we look towards the future.

Dan Hood (25:14):

But I know that you all have some spectacular technologies, particularly around sort of judging, this is one of my favorite ones. Judging, looking across your talent base and saying who’s at most risk of perhaps jumping in the near future? Those kinds of tools are going to be hugely valuable to firms in the future. Darren, when you look ahead, Bibi, particularly at accounting, do you see things that firms should be paying attention to on the rise in terms of engagement?

Darren Root (25:40):

I feel like flexibility and not putting everybody in the nine to five or eight to five box that we’ve historically done is going to continue to be important and even more important. And I’m sure Tina would have more information on that than I would, but I think flexibility and then how organizations are going to adopt some level of ai, whether that’s in the role that they serve and serving customers or it’s in leadership and understanding things like ADP is going to understand, which is how somebody’s feeling today or who’s most at risk and all those sort of things. So I think that’s going to continue to be more and more important in the coming cycles.

Dan Hood (26:28):

Excellent. Alright. Well, as I said, there’s a lot more we could talk about, but we we’re running out of time. I think we kept everybody engaged throughout the lengths of this discussion. So mission accomplished and he gave ’em a lot of funds for how to keep their employees engaged for the long term. Tino Wang and Darren Root, thank you so much for joining us.

Darren Root (26:43):

Thank you, Dan.

Dan Hood (26:45):

Thank you. And thank you all for listening. This episode of On the Air was produced by Accounting Today with audio production by Adnan K Radio. Review us on your favorite podcast platform and see the rest of our content on accounting today.com. Thanks again to our guests and thank you for listening.