Managing Staff Shortages in your Accounting Practice

There’s no doubt that the UK is facing severe staff shortages and accountancy practices have been no exception.

The great resignation, Brexit and demographic changes have meant that the employment market has got tighter and employers have had to work harder to make sure they have the staff they need.

We have no way of knowing how long this state of affairs will last so it makes sense to look at ways to adjust our working practices to manage the current workload and hopefully grow.

In this post we are looking at ways to improve your processes, leaving your staff to get on with the important tasks on their list.

In this article;

• Forget recruiting
• Don’t buy skills, develop skills
• Do a systems analysis
• Do a process analysis
• Time for a party
• Automate, Automate, Automate
• Work hard on your EQ

Forget recruiting

When the labour market tightens we constantly see articles that give you great tips to recruit better.

That’s great but it ignores the best thing you can do to solve your staff crisis and that is to retain the people you already have.

Retention has been shown to be much cheaper than recruitment and yet often employers spend huge amounts of money on recruitment agency fees rather than giving their current people a few home comforts.

Instead of trying to fight off the big accounting firms why not devise a retention strategy to keep and develop the people you already have?

Don’t buy skills, develop skills

So often practice owners find themselves hunting for someone who has a specific skill to bring on board.

Often this is at a huge cost and with sought-after skills like tax and compliance, you can find yourself in an employment arms race as you try to outbid your competition.

But this ignores the richest source of people for your business - the people you already have.

Retention and training are intertwined and investing in the careers of the people who are already with you increases loyalty, retention and morale.

Training courses look expensive at first sight, but the value they add to your practice could be immeasurable and when you compare them to the agency fee for recruiting just one person they actually look like really good value.

Do a systems analysis

We’ve talked about the people that work for you but there’s another area that often gets overlooked and yet it is something that can pay massive dividends in terms of efficiency.

Often we are guilty of thinking that if our software isn’t broken then we shouldn’t fix it and as a result, it gets outdated and outclassed by newer applications.

Even if you don’t invest in the best systems out there you can still look at your current software and see if there are any features or functionalities that you could use to produce efficiencies.

Have a word with your provider and see what is available and what your peers are using.

And make sure you have applied the latest security patches!

Do a process analysis

Processes are another thing that can be forgotten in the hurley burly of daily work.

Sometimes though you just need to ask yourself “Why are we doing that” or “Why do we do it that way?”.

Don’t accept the answer “Because that’s how we’ve always done it” though.

Processes that made complete sense only a couple of years ago pre-pandemic might now seem ridiculous and long-winded and could be sucking away billable hours.

Just list out the things you do in one column of a spreadsheet and then why you do them in the next column and we’d be willing to bet there will be some things that will stick out like a sore thumb.

Time for a party

A 3rd party that is.

Third-party apps are a brilliant way to extend the functionality of your systems and reduce the hours you spend on unproductive admin.

Modern integration through APIs means that you can link up your practice management software with an electronic signature system and your CRM.

You can even use things like Zapier to link up apps that don’t naturally integrate and there’s nothing better than seeing your clients being called by the same name across all of your systems!

Can we mention Caxton as a slick, quick and efficient 3rd party payment system here? It’s helpful if you make payments, run payroll or need to send money overseas and integrates with major software in seconds.

Automate, Automate, Automate

So you’ve slimmed down your processes, you have great new software and you have implemented a few third-party apps.

Now it is time to automate your processes.

Linking all of these up and setting in place automation rules is actually easier (and much more satisfying) than you could ever believe.

Imagine a customer onboarding automation that takes the initial enquiry, runs through the KYC process, sends out the engagement letter, sets up a client account on your practice management service and produces a new client installation on your bookkeeping and payroll systems.

There are so many ways that you can automate repetitive, mundane tasks that you’ll wonder why you haven’t done it before.

Work hard on your EQ

Emotional intelligence is often seen as unproductive or a ‘nice to have’ but that’s a short-sighted approach to something that can be incredibly powerful.

As practice owner you need to keep yourself in tip-top condition and set the tone of the office so if you are in a positive, happy frame of mind then that permeates every aspect of your day.

A happy motivated boss is more productive and valuable for the practice but alongside this, a leader who is empathetic, motivating and understanding will increase retention and, in turn, produce more productive employees.

The best investment you can make is in yourself so why not check out a course or get a coach and see how a little personal improvement can actually make your practice much more efficient?

Nothing good happens without hard work

The fact is that we are now facing a sustained period where good help will be hard to come by so forward-thinking practice owners and managers have to have a plan in place to cope.

Putting in retention and upskilling measures means that the people you already have will be the best they can be and will stick around.

Revitalising the systems you use, switching on unused features and integrating across your tech stack will help by cutting down manual processing. Using automation with integrated third-party apps can speed up processes and allow you to concentrate on the important things like customer relationships.

And remember, look after your EQ as the best investment you can ever make is in yourself.

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If you are looking for a slick solution to make faster payments then take a look at Caxton. Quicker and cheaper than BACS and easier to use it is perfect for your practice or your clients. Book a demo now.