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As the head of client accounts, your top priority will be minimising staff turnover, recruitment of new client accountants, balancing portfolio to head ratio and maintaining client service levels.
In a highly competitive and candidate-rich market, attrition rates are up. So what are the key reasons client accountants leave their jobs and how do you keep your top talent?
Workload – Winning new contracts is fantastic, but the impact on workload for team members needs to be monitored. Open communication and realistic portfolio sizes are crucial to prevent overloading and burnout of your team. Check-in regularly and create an environment where colleagues feel free to express concerns or struggles with their portfolio.
Recognition – Regular 1-1s, sharing successes across the business and team and creating ways to recognise great effort will help to improve morale, engagement and motivation. Try monthly internal votes on key values or behaviours that are important to your clients (even consider including reviews or satisfaction scores from clients) and promote these wherever relevant (think LinkedIn, your website, intranet etc).
Progression – Create a culture where your team can co-create their career journey within your organisation and make sure you understand their personal goals. If they can’t find the right pace of growth in your team, they will look elsewhere.
Study support – empty promises of study support are a trust-breaker. By creating the balance between strong study contracts and a culture of continued learning, you’ll keep your top talent as they gain professional qualifications.
Pay them well – Keep your finger on the pulse of expected salaries and benefits based on the value of your team. A great way to do this is to speak confidentially to a specialist recruiter (that’s where we come in!), so you can get an objective feel for salary and benefits expectations.
If you would like a confidential conversation on salary expectations of client accountants, please feel free to book a short call or email me.
If you need more capacity or already know what you’re looking for just drop me a line and I can share relevant profiles of our fantastic network of client accounting professionals who have a wealth of experience in the world of real estate and construction.
Article written by Amy Mottershead, Senior Consultant- Finance & Business Systems.