Busy Season is Retention Season

Many of us that have Firm Administration duties also have HR duties, and many HR only people are CPAFMA members, so this idea should hit home with most of us.

The accountants have all been busy with their audits and taxes and we’ve been playing catch-up on all the things we couldn’t get done when the accountants and partners were less busy and came to us with ideas and issues and projects. Busy season is always my quietest time of year as far as interruptions. 

We need to make sure that during slower times, we put some of that time and energy into employee retention. It’s important all year long, but a little more so when time is available. Workloads have gotten tough throughout the year and people get tense and that can lead to negative thoughts. Firm managers need to give that extra effort to make work fun and get people looking forward to working extra hours, not dreading it.

Your competition is doing it and your employees know it. Your younger staff is still friends with their buddies from college who are also accountants somewhere else and everyone is comparing notes; “My firm just had a great scavenger hunt this Saturday”, “We had a masseuse come in yesterday – it was great”. And so on and so forth. The grass is always greener to start with, don’t add to that concept by not being fun and innovative. Your older staff may not be so easily swayed by these gestures but your younger staff is very susceptible to being lured away by a better work life. Millennials are very apt to move around naturally, don’t give them a push out the door by not being a good place to work.

Your entire staff, new and veterans, and more likely to judge your firm on the atmosphere during busy season than the whole rest of the year. Do you want your staff passively recruiting their peers to join you, are do you want them being passively recruited away because of a poor busy season experience?