state of the accounting, finance and audit professions
“We’re in a competitive game to beat other professions because the demographics are such that we are not going to replace financial professionals one-for-one over the next 20 years – no matter that accounting enrollments are full today. The pipeline of people reaching retirement is too great unless we get a disproportionate share of workers compared to what everyone else is getting.” Barry Melancon, President and CEO, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants
“Letting people wind down versus ending their career on a particular given date is a way to address this issue [impact of retiring baby boomers]. The notion of retirement in steps is not something that’s broadly understood or articulated, but it makes more sense to let people ease out of the workforce over some period of time.”
Taylor Hawes, Controller, Global Platforms and Operations, Microsoft
“When we recruit, we talk about the career opportunities that employees have outside of the finance area as well, so we paint a broad picture, and I think we get more people who are interested in coming into finance because of it.” Chris Cole, Senior Vice President and CFO, McDonald’s U.S.A., LLC
“What if your top performer walked in today and said ‘I have a job offer for X plus 30 percent’? What would you do to counter that? What discussion would you have about future opportunities, future pay, flexibility – whatever makes them tick? Have that discussion before they get that offer, before somebody comes in to get them.” Leslie Murphy, Group Managing Partner, Plante & Moran
“I think if we really understand what our employees want, we’ll be more apt to retain them. And sometimes it’s not all about a big office, big title or the dollars.” RJ Valentine, CFO, ECNext
“People don’t have to be at the office to do their work. They can be working from home or working part time. Employers have a wide variety of effective work arrangements they can offer their staff.” Kevin Dancey, President and CEO, Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants
“We really need to re-engineer the approach we’re taking to the delegation of work and how we look at it. We’re still in the mindset of the way we grew up, so we are structuring work in the same manner, and we simply have to re-engineer that whole work process to improve relevancy.” Leslie Murphy, Group Managing Partner, Plante & Moran
“[Members of Generation Y] are not content running [photocopy] machines.
They can be content doing Sarbanes-Oxley work for a little while – if it is presented to them as a learning process about better understanding business processes and risk and control, and if they see the relevance to their ability to make decisions.” Larry Rittenberg, Chairman, Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission; Ernst & Young Professor, Department of Accounting and Information Systems, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business
“Our experience has been that as we’ve elevated communication skills to ‘must haves’ as opposed to ‘nice to haves,’ people who want to be successful shift their focus. We need to make certain that we have raised those skill sets high enough in the pecking order that people believe they’re as important as their technical skills.” Bob Bunting, Partner, Moss Adams LLP
“I don’t think the intent or objective of communication has changed. It’s the delivery methodologies that have evolved. And I think if we’re going to reject those changes, it’s kind of like standing in front of the tsunami; they’re just going to come and hit us.” RJ Valentine, CFO, ECNext
“If you really want to see yourself as a global organization, you need an employee base that represents the countries and marketplaces that you’re working in. I think that’s a struggle for a lot of U.S.-based companies that are not familiar with the marketplaces that they are trying to enter.” Dave Richards, President, The Institute of Internal Auditors
“If you’re going to compete on the world stage, you really need that multicultural influence both in headquarters and in the field.” Derek Briffett, Senior Financial Officer, Global Accounting and Finance Operations, ConAgra Foods International
