Some Thoughts on Workload Compression: From a Managing Partner's Perspective

As an owner and managing partner of a 14-member CPA firm, I must accept the fact that workload compression is a part of the firm's annual calendar - understanding that I cannot totally control the challenge.  I love tax season and that is not a personality defect!  I get a sense of purpose from meeting our mission every year within our corporate strategy.   

We get to rediscover the life journey of clients in our re-connection meetings.  We find out what worries them on family and business.  Becoming their life coach and adviser restarts every February during these one-on-one meetings.  Nothing gets better than solving problems and financial frustrations in our annual meetings.  So I embrace the annual meeting and client service (aka tax) season.

But what can we do to reduce firm schedule, staff frustrations, and the anxiety over the build up of firm inventory?

Here are things we have tried in our firm and in talking with other managing partners - 

• Agree with partners on an early date that client return data entering the office is an extension candidate.  It is okay to educate clients on why extensions make sense and last minutes calculations of difficult transactions is best handled after April 15th.  Continue to push extension options to clients.
• Hire seasonal and new staff to provide assistance with document scanning and initial input.  One firm I talked to hires support staff to do this.  Give support staff a little December training and they can scan and enter alot of the data as it comes in.
• Hire college interns.  Give them a chance to prove themselves during the season.  They can prove their value better when the pressure is on.  
• Continue to build your firm with more staff than partners and managers - build a pyramid!  More staff at lower levels does ensure good basic quantity of the work at the lowest possible level.
• Centralize job and engagement scheduling with just one person.  This should not be a partner but a manager working directly with staff and supervisors.  They should direct traffic, client contact to get data needed to complete the work, and hold meetings to resolve bottlenecks and overload.  The weekly meeting can also help staff to keep the work flowing.  The overall objective of this position is to move projects forward for review and processing.  More partner time can increase to time to complete projects.  More resolution of issues at lower levels completes projects faster.
• Lastly, we have a weekly meeting, called our Thursday Pizza Party. We do relax a little and work through new enhancements and issues found in tax software and our own processing steps. These meetings help us keep jobs turning faster.  Sharing knowledge is key to success for our staff and clients.

I'd appreciate it if you would participate in this very brief survey before May 2, 2016.  We can build a great list of mitigators and approaches to help each other and be creative and innovative in dealing with workload compression.