Talent
Keeping the talent flowing
How four members are dealing with talent shortages and rising wage expectations in their roles.
Clare Elliott
FMAAT, CFO, ILUX
Andy Smith
FMAAT, founder, Abbeygate Accountancy
Andy Murray
FMAAT, finance manager,
Galson Sciences
Alasdair McGill
founder and MD Ashton McGill
What is the recruitment picture like at the moment? Are you confident you can find and retain good staff?
Andy Smith
“Our clients tell us there’s a shortage across many sectors; however, looking at the accounting industry, depending on what level you are looking for and how flexible you can be, it is still relatively easy to recruit. We find there are still companies being relatively rigid that are losing quality employees.
“That said, when it comes to attracting people or graduates into the industry, I have heard that this is becoming a bit more of a challenge. I think that attracting accountants from industry to practice is the biggest challenge (and they are the most valuable to our firm) as they can offer real life business experience and knowledge. We have looked to offshore some of our compliance work but kept the advisory in the UK.”
Andy Murray
“It’s a really competitive market out there for us. Finding the right skillset and professional competence within the sector continues to be a challenge, and there have been instances where a strong candidate was lost to competitors. Therefore, moving at the right pace for hiring is so important.”
Clare Elliott
“It’s a challenge to get a good selection of candidates, so the pool of opportunity is much less. That means compromising a lot more than I would like to. Added to that, the expectations from candidates have also increased. Due to higher demand and less supply, candidates can be much more selective about what they want, and less willing to compromise. The work-life balance is at an all time high - which I’m not saying is a bad thing, but it makes it harder to recruit from an employer’s perspective.”
There is a disparity between what an employer can afford and what the employee needs
Clare Elliott, FMAAT, CFO, ILUX
How is inflation driving salary expectations?
Clare Elliott
“Salaries are still extremely high, despite people struggling with the cost of living crisis. So there is a disparity between what an employer can afford and what the employee needs.
Some employers are then being excluded from the market as they simply cannot compete with some incredibly high salaries some companies are offering. And this is still continuing. And I do wonder if this will cause bigger problems later when employers need to reduce salary costs and need to re-recruit those roles to achieve that. That leaves employees vulnerable, and employers with more recruitment problems.”
Alasdair McGill
“We constantly review market salaries, and we look after our team well. The challenge really is around recruitment. Over the last year, we’ve tried to add a number of positions, particularly in payroll and bookkeeping it we’ve really struggled with certain roles, we’ve just not been able to fill them because there aren’t the right people in the market (see President’s interview, p12).We’re having to pay way more than we would have done 18 months ago. So that will cause us a challenge because even if we take the most junior person in these interviews, they’re going to want to be paid more than a person who will be ahead of them inside of our organisation. And so actually we’ve then had to sit back and look at our clients and say, ‘Well, do we need to change anything here?’ And then actually go through a whole repricing exercise with clients.”
Do you expect to be able to recruit well in the coming year?
Alasdair McGill
“We’ve got really ambitious growth plans for the year ahead. And so there’s a tension there that we’ve got to figure out. We’d probably be looking to add two or three of those types of roles a year. And now by the time you factor everything in, you’re looking at a package that means we’ve got to generate a lot of extra fees; that’s the way our model works to pay for one of those people. So it puts pressure on our sales function and we’re starting to build that out in a more structured professional way.”
Andy Murray
“With a strong pipeline of work, our focus is to deliver as much of that as possible within the current resourcing capacity. Recruitment remains a strong driver to our success and all avenues are being explored such as in-house recruitment and members of the team proactively headhunting within the industry. One upside which puts us in a fortunate position is that our orderbook will roll over, meaning the work can be scoped for the next financial year. But the biggest challenge we’ll face would have to be resourcing. And, yes, inflation is a concern. Our customers are even tighter on spending budgets. Some are even cut, which means projects may have to be repurposed. With inflation this has a knock-on effect on employee’s expectations regarding pay, after all we all see an increase to utilities, consumables, mortgages and rent increases, so it is expected. The organisation supports its staff wherever it is possible.”
AAT Salary Survey
Keep an eye out for AAT’s Salary Survey 2023/24 in the January/February 2024 edition of AT.
