Great News to report.. Mark Bailey and Company has again been selected as one of the 2009 Best Accounting Firms to Work for. What makes our firm different and sets us apart? Our people.
Seems like a simple answer yet we truly have great people who have a passion for what they do. Employees who enjoy coming to work each day, are respected and know they are an integral part of the firm enable us to provide a work environment that sets us apart.
Some of the most common complaints expressed by our assurance seniors are that the client “didn’t complete the schedule request properly, or provide adequate support timely, or apply the appropriate accounting principles properly, or, or, or, yada, yada, yada”. And correspondingly the audit team didn’t meet, or, had trouble meeting their due date. (We assign due dates for projects based on budgets, and allow the team members to determine when, where and how they will perform the engagement, rather than attempting to micromanage their time and daily lives.) After hearing this refrain / excuse for the umpteenth time during one of our recent after action reports for a very good client, I reminded the offending senior of the purpose of our use of Client Service Agreements and why we have change orders. Read more…
Last week we were informed we had been selected by Accounting Today as one of the top accounting firms to work for in the United States. I understand there will be an article published in January, 2009. How did we go from being a firm that had the universal difficulty of other accounting firms – attracting and retaining top talent – to being named to such a prestigious club in four years?: We changed our business philosophy, and consequently our overall approach to providing service, after following the traditional accepted approach for 25 years. Read more…
In a recent post on Trendlines, Gary Boomer held forth on the staffing crisis in our profession. Succinct and to the point, Boomer lists four reasons. While all four are valid, my experience over the past five years has identified one as being most significant – Firms with low retention and high staff turnover work their associates too many hours. It’s not rocket science. Read more…
I hailed from a large international accounting firm and like most of my coworkers there I became sick of the long work hours and never ending cycle of stress and emotional guilt tripping that comes with trying to justify going home after just ten or twelve hours. Searching for another job was difficult, as I rarely had a minute that wasn’t filled by working, commuting or sleeping. But the most substantial barrier to quitting my big accounting firm job was the myths that circulated concerning small firms. Read more…
When I ‘retired’ from Arthur Young and Company a couple of years ago, (1978) it wasn’t because I didn’t love the profession, or the work. It wasn’t because the compensation was inadequate. It was the job. It was my employer. I wasn’t trusted. I was given an annual quota of time to fill, monitored by a semi-monthly report submitted on my time sheet in quarter hours. Annually, there was a summary of my hourly performance in comparison to my peers and to employees that I had never met, who had served before me. We complied with an arbitrary standard we had no input in setting. The majority of my waking hours were planned for me, without my input. Read more…
I never dreamt of pursuing a career in public accounting. I chose the major because the classes actually challenged me and I thought it would provide the most initial job stability out of college while in search of my “dream job.”
Like many accounting graduates, my first “real” job out of college was as a staff auditor at a Big Four firm. Everything looked good: my paycheck, my resume, my wardrobe. It didn’t feel very good though, and I don’t think there could ever be enough training week “hospitalities” or late night firm-sponsored meals hunched over my laptop in a crowded audit room to ever make it feel good.
We have two staff rooms in our offices in Reno. One on the accounting and assurance side of our house, and the other on the ‘Dark Side’. The refrigerators in each are bulletin boards for pictures, insults, jokes and matters of other significance. Typically you hope not to find comments, pictures or references to yourself or something you’ve done.This week, a Senior Assurance Manager posted an article that appeared in the December issue of the Journal of Accountancy Tax Corner titled How to Ease the Burden of Busy Season .The focus of the article is on what some firms have done to make the busy tax season more ‘palatable’, e.g. paying for dinner on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. (Apparently Wednesdays are required family nights.) While lunch isn’t paid for, they do have a delivery service so you can eat at your desk. And my personal favorite ‘vending machine snacks reduced to twenty-five cents’ ! Are you kidding me?!! Read more…
I nearly killed myself in college to get straight A’s. Well, almost straight A’s. I graduated with 37 A’s and 3 B’s for a GPA of 3.921. At the time, I thought I was hot stuff. Now I wonder if it wasn’t a waste of time.”
We are taught that our grades are a reflection our our success. After entering the workforce do we still believe that? This post on Penelope Trunks’s Brazen Careerist by guest poster Jon Morrow hits the nail on the head.
In an article published December 5, by smartpros.com, PricewaterhouseCoopers characterized the results of a recent survey as validating the work schedule requirements of the firm. Seventy-five percent of the respondents to the survey, (some 2793 entry level professionals offered positions by PwC), indicated they expected to work a ‘normal work week’. The survey further indicated that on average each graduate expected to have between 2 and 5 employers in their lifetime. The article and related link to the PwC survey are at http://accounting.smartpros.com/x60006.xml.
Interestingly, neither the article or the survey defined ‘normal work week’. Typically, the normal work week in the United States is considered to be 40 to 45 hours (move to France if you think 30 to 35 is more reasonable and want the government to pay for it). Read more…
