ACCOUNTANCY firms are tired of being used as training providers. They have cottoned on to the fact that they need to offer more than a base from which accountants can gain their qualifications if they are to ensure that they get the most out of the investment they put into their students.
For the Big Four, this realisation came a couple of years ago. Riaz Shah, the people and operations leader for audit at Ernst & Young, decided that he wanted to sort out the company’s high turnover of newly-qualified accountants. “The number leaving us used to be 45 per cent (three years ago),” he says. “It’s 22 per cent now.” While some level of turnover is to be expected, losing nearly half every year was a bit much. So Shah found out why people seemed so keen to leave by simply talking to them. “Those leaving wanted a number of things: a break, variety in their work. Now we offer a menu of 30 development opportunities in the form of a booklet.” Newly-qualifieds can take sabbaticals or do an MBA paid for by the company. They can also go to clients on secondment.
Ernst & Young isn’t the only firm to offer incentives for accountants to make a career with the company with which they qualify. “When trainees qualify they are hugely marketable,” says Nikki Mitchell, an audit and assurance partner at Deloitte. “The bombardment is intense: headhunters dangle extremely attractive short-term packages in front of them. So we help them to understand the opportunities at Deloitte in a programme entitled ‘Your Career at Deloitte’. The key aim is to treat career development like any other skill.” The programme was introduced in spring last year and since then retention in audit has increased by 16 per cent.
KPMG has a similar scheme for its newly-qualifieds. “It’s been in place in different forms for five years, but over the past two years we’ve revamped it,” says Dave Conder, the director of HR for KPMG in the UK. The company has also been spurred on by the war for talent. “We put on the table what (trainees’) options are and how to access them.” Conder puts on an event in the trainees’ third year that is in effect an internal recruitment fair. “It puts across all opportunities and allows them to build contacts,” he says.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), meanwhile, is in the process of encouraging its trainees to think in terms of “two plus two” years instead of three by organising a pivotal career event in the second year. “Exams create a mental contract of three years,” says Charles Macleod, the director of resourcing. “After that point they’re very vulnerable,” he says, echoing Mitchell’s point that at this stage they are likely to be poached by external companies. While he emphasises that turnover is quite low at PwC, he adds: “The portrayal of what’s on offer for accountants after qualification hasn’t been too good.” He sees this as a chance to make the company live up to its brand and reputation as an employer with good opportunities.